
THE LIBRARY 

OF 

THE UNIVERSITY 

OF CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 



ESSAYS FOR COLLEGE MEN 

Education, Science, and Art 



Chosen by 

NORMAN FOERSTER 

FREDERICK A. MANCHESTER 

KARL YOUNG 

Of the University of Wisconsin 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1913 



/.I325ZI 



CopyKiQHT, 1913, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING * 3 

Woodrow Wilson. 

II. INAUGURAL ADDRESS 28 

Alexander Meiklejohn. 

III. KNOWLEDGE VIEWED IN RELATION TO LEARNING 60 

John Henry Newman. 

IV. KNOWLEDGE VIEWED IN RELATION TO PROFES- 

SIONAL SKILL 96 

John Henri/ Newman. 

V. ON SCIENCE AND ART IN RELATION TO EDUCA- 
TION 133 

Thomas Henry Huxley. 
VI. THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED . . 163 

William James. 
VII. ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL. 

KNOWLEDGE 176 

Thomas Henry Huxley. 
VIII. ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL 

HISTORY SCIENCES 201 

Thomas Henry Huxley. 

IX. A CHANGE OF EDUCATIONAL EMPHASIS . . 230 
Edward Asahel Birap. 

X. AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 263 

John Tyndall. 

XI. LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 276 

Matthew Arnold. 

XII. THE STUDY OF ART 309 

John Calrd. 

XIII. FIRST PRINCIPLES 339 

George Edward Woodberry. 

XIV. How To READ . . . ' 362 

Frederic Harrison. 



ESSAYS FOR COLLEGE MEN 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 1 

WOOD ROW WILSON 

WE have fallen of late into a deep discontent 
with the college, with the life and the work of the 
undergraduates in our universities. It is an hon- 
orable discontent, bred in us by devotion, not by 
captiousness or hostility or by an unreasonable 
impatience to set the world right. We are not 
critics, but anxious and thoughtful friends. We 
are neither cynics nor pessimists, but honest lovers 
of a good thing, of whose slightest deterioration 
we are jealous. We would fain keep one of the 
finest instrumentalities of our national life from 
falling short of its best, and believe that by a little 
care and candor we can do so. 

The American college has played a unique part 
in American life. So long as its aims were definite 
and its processes authoritative it formed men who 
brought to their tasks an incomparable morale, a 
capacity that seemed more than individual, a 

1 Oration delivered before the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta 
Kappa, Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, July 1, 1909. Reprinted 
through the generous permission of Woodrow Wilson and of 
I7ie Harvard Graduates' Magazine. 

3 



4 WOODROW WILSON 

power touched with large ideals. The college has 
been the seat of ideals. The liberal training which 
it sought to impart took no thought of any par- 
ticular profession or business, but was meant to 
reflect in its few and simple disciplines the image 
of life and thought. Men were bred by it to no 
skill or craft or calling: the discipline to which 
they were subjected had a more general object. 
It was meant to prepare them for the whole of life 
rather than for some particular part of it. The 
ideals which lay at its heart were the general ideals 
of conduct, of right living, and right thinking, 
which made them aware of a world moralized by 
principle, steadied and cleared of many an evil 
thing by true and catholic reflection and just feel- 
ing, a world, not of interests, but of ideas. 

Such impressions, such challenges to a man's 
spirit, such intimations of privilege and duty are 
not to be found in the work and obligations of pro- 
fessional and technical -schools. They cannot be. 
Every calling has its ethics, indeed, its standards 
of right conduct and wrong, its outlook upon 
action and upon the varied relationships of so- 
ciety. Its work is high and honorable, grounded, 
it may be, in the exact knowledge which moralizes 
the processes of thought, and in a skill which 
makes the whole man serviceable. But it is notori- 
ous how deep and how narrow the absorptions of 
the professional school are and how much they 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 5 

are necessarily concentrated upon the methods and 
interests of a particular occupation. The work 
to be done in them is as exact, as definite, as ex- 
clusive as that of the office and the shop. Their 
atmosphere is the atmosphere of business, and 
should be. It does not beget generous comrade- 
ships or any ardor of altruistic feeling such as 
the college begets. It does not contain that gen- 
eral air of the world of science and of letters in 
which the mind seeks no special interest, but feels 
every intimate impulse of the spirit set free to 
think and observe and listen, listen to all the 
voices of the mind. The professional school differs 
from the college as middle age differs from youth. 
It gets the spirit of the college only by imitation 
or reminiscence or contagion. This is to say noth- 
ing to its discredit. Its nature and objects are 
different from those of the college, as legitimate, 
as useful, as necessary; but different. The col- 
lege is the place of orientation; the professional 
school is the place of concentration. The object 
of the college is to liberalize and moralize; the 
object of the professional school is to train the 
powers to a special task. And this is true of all 
vocational study. 

I am, of course, using the words liberalize and 
moralize in their broadest significance, and I am 
very well aware that I am speaking in the terms 
of an ideal, a conception, rather than in the terms 



6 WOODROW WILSON 

of realized fact. I have spoken, too, of what the 
college did " so long as its aims were definite and 
its processes authoritative," as if I were thinking 
of it wholly in the past tense and wished to inti- 
mate that it was once a very effective and ideal 
thing but had now ceased to exist ; so that one 
would suppose that I thought the college lost out 
of our life and the present a time when such influ- 
ences were all to seek. But that is only because 
I have not been able to say everything at once. 
Give me leave, and I will slowly write in the phrases 
which will correct these impressions and bring a 
true picture to light. 

The college has lost its definiteness of aim, and 
has now for so long a time affected to be too 
modest to assert its authority over its pupils in 
any matter of prescribed study that it can no 
longer claim to be the nurturing mother it once 
was ; but the college is neither dead nor moribund, 
and it has made up for its relaxed discipline and 
confused plans of study by many notable gains, 
which, if they have not improved its scholarship, 
have improved the health and the practical morals 
of the young gentlemen who resort to it, have en- 
hanced their vigor and quickened their whole na- 
tures. A freer choice of studies has imparted to 
it a stir, an air of freedom and individual initia- 
tive, a wealth and variety of instruction which the 
old college altogether lacked. The development 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 7 

of athletic sports and the immoderate addiction 
of undergraduates to stimulating activities of all 
sorts, academic and unacademic, which improve 
their physical habits, fill their lives with interest- 
ing objects, sometimes important, and challenge 
their powers of organization and practical man- 
agement, have unquestionably raised the tone of 
morals and of conduct in our colleges and have 
given them an interesting, perhaps valuable, con- 
nection with modern society and the broader pop- 
ular interests of the day. No one need regret the 
breaking-up of the dead levels of the old college, 
the introduction and exaltation of modern studies, 
or the general quickening of life which has made 
of our youngsters more manly fellows, if less 
docile pupils. There had come to be something 
rather narrow and dull and morbid, no doubt, 
about the old college before its day was over. If 
we gain our advances by excessive reactions and 
changes which change too much, we at least gain 
them, and should be careful not to lose the advan- 
tage of them. 

Nevertheless, the evident fact is, that we have 
now for a long generation devoted ourselves to 
promoting changes which have resulted in all but 
complete disorganization, and it is our plain and 
immediate duty to form our plans for reorganiza- 
tion. We must reexamine the college, reconceive 
it, reorganize it. It is the root of our intellectual 



8 WOODROW WILSON 

life as a nation. It is not only the instrumentality 
through which we must effect all the broad prelim- 
inary work which underlies sound scholarship ; it is 
also our chief instrumentality of catholic enlight- 
enment, our chief means for giving widespread 
stimulation to the whole intellectual life of the 
country and supplying ourselves with men who 
shall both comprehend their age and duty and 
know how to serve them supremely well. Without 
the American college our young men would be 
too exclusively shut in to the pursuit of individual 
interests, would lose the vital contacts and emula- 
tions which awaken them to those larger achieve- 
ments and sacrifices which are the highest objects 
of education in a country of free citizens, where 
the welfare of the commonwealth springs out of 
the character and the informed purposes of the 
private citizen. The college will be found to lie 
somewhere very near the heart of American social 
training and intellectual and moral enlightenment. 
The process is familiar to every one by which 
the disintegration was brought about which de- 
stroyed the old college with its fixed disciplines 
and ordered life and gave us our present problem 
of reorganization and recovery. It centred in the 
break-up of the old curriculum and the introduc- 
tion of the principle that the student was to select 
his own studies from a great variety of courses, 
as great a variety as the resources of the college 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 9 

and the supply of teachers available made possible. 
But the change could not in the nature of things 
stop with the plan of study. It held at its heart 
a tremendous implication: the implication of full 
manhood on the part of the pupil, and all the un- 
trammeled choices of manhood. The pupil who 
was mature and well informed enough to study 
what he chose was also by necessary implication 
mature enough to be left free to do what he 
pleased, to choose his own associations and ways 
of life outside the curriculum without restraint 
or suggestion ; and the varied, absorbing college 
life of our day sprang up as the natural offspring 
of the free election of studies. 

There went along with the relaxation of rule 
as to what undergraduates should study, there- 
fore, an almost absolute divorce between the 
studies and the life of the college, its business and 
its actual daily occupations. The teacher ceased 
to look upon himself as related in any responsible 
way to the life of his pupils, to what they should 
be doing and thinking of between one class exer- 
cise and another, and conceived his whole duty 
to have been performed when he had given his 
lecture and afforded those who were appointed to 
come the opportunity to hear and heed it if they 
chose. The teachers of this new regime, moreover, 
were most of them trained for their teaching work 
in German universities, or in American universi- 



10 WOODROW WILSON 

tics in which the methods, the points of view, the 
spirit, and the object of the German universities 
were, consciously or unconsciously, reproduced. 
They think of their pupils, therefore, as men al- 
ready disciplined by some general training such 
as the German gymnasium gives, and seeking in 
the university special acquaintance with particular 
studies, as an introduction to special fields of in- 
formation and inquiry. They have never thought 
of the university as a community of teachers and 
pupils : they think of it, rather, as a body of 
teachers and investigators to whom those may 
resort who seriously desire specialized kinds of 
knowledge. They are specialists imported into an 
American system which has lost its old point of 
view and found no new one suitable to the needs 
and circumstances of America. They do not think 
of living with their pupils and affording them 
the contacts of culture ; they are only accessible 
to them at stated periods and for a definite and 
limited service ; and their teaching is an interrup- 
tion to their favorite work of research. 

Meanwhile, the constituency of the college has 
wholly changed. It is not only the bookish classes 
who now send their sons to college, but also the 
men of business and of affairs, who expect their 
sons to follow in their own footsteps and do work 
with which books have little connection. In the 
old days of which I have spoken most young men 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 11 

who went to college expected to enter one or other 
of the learned professions, expected to have to 
do with books and some of the more serious kinds 
of learning all their lives. Books were their 
proper introduction to the work that lay before 
them ; learning was their natural discipline and 
preparation. But nowadays the men who are 
looking forward to the learned professions are in 
a minority at the college. Most undergraduates 
come out of an atmosphere of business and wish 
a breeding which is consonant with it. They do 
not wish learning. They wish only a certain fresh- 
ening of their faculties for the miscellaneous con- 
tacts of life, a general acquaintance with what 
men are doing and saying in their own genera- 
tion, a certain facility in handling themselves and 
in getting on with their fellows. They are much 
more interested in the incidental associations of 
college life than in the main intellectual occupa- 
tions of the place. They want to be made men 
of, not scholars ; and the life led at college is as 
serviceable for that as any of the tasks set in the 
class-room. If they want what the formal teach- 
ing offers them at all, it is for some definite and 
practical purpose connected with the calling they 
expect to follow, the business they expect to en- 
gage in. Such pupils are specially unsuitable for 
such teachers. 

Here, then, is our situation. Here is the little 



12 WOODROW WILSON 

world of teachers and pupils, athletic associations, 
musical and literary clubs, social organizations 
and societies for amusement, class-room and play- 
ground, of which we must make analysis, out of 
which we must get a new synthesis, a definite aim, 
and new processes of authoritative direction, losing 
nothing that has been gained, recovering what has 
been lost. All the fresh elements we have gained 
are valuable, many of the new points of view are 
those from which we must look upon the whole 
task and function of the college if we would see 
it truly ; but we have fallen upon an almost hope- 
less confusion and an utter dispersion of energy. 
We must pull the whole inorganic thing together 
under a new conception of what the college must 
be and do. 

The chief and characteristic mistake which the 
teachers and governors of our colleges have made 
in these latter days has been that they have de- 
voted themselves and their plans too exclusively 
to the business, the very commonplace business, 
of instruction, to well-conceived lectures and ap- 
proved class-room method, and have not enough 
regarded the life of the mind. The mind does not 
live by instruction. It is no prolix gut to be 
stuffed. The real intellectual life of a body of 
undergraduates, if there be any, manifests itself, 
not in the class-room, but in what they do and talk 
of and set before themselves as their favorite ob- 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 13 

jects between classes and lectures. You will see 
the true life of a college in the evenings, at the 
dinner-table or beside the fire in the groups that 
gather and the men that go off eagerly to their 
work, where youths get together and let them- 
selves go upon their favorite themes, in the effect 
their studies have upon them when no compulsion 
of any kind is on them and they are not thinking 
to be called to a reckoning of what they know. 

The effects of learning are its real tests, the 
real tests alike of its validity and of its efficacy. 
The mind can be driven, but that is not life. Life 
is voluntary or unconscious. It is breathed in 
out of a sustaining atmosphere. It is shaped by 
environment. It is habitual, continuous, produc- 
tive. It does not consist in tasks performed, but 
in powers gained and enhanced. It cannot be com- 
municated in class-rooms if its aim and end is the 
class-room. Instruction is not its source, but only 
its incidental means and medium. 

Here is the key to the whole matter: the object 
of the college, as we have known and used and 
loved it in America, is not scholarship (except for 
the few, and for them only by way of introduc- 
tion and first orientation), but the intellectual and 
spiritual life. Its life and discipline are meant 
to be a process of preparation, not a process of 
information. By the intellectual and spiritual life 
I mean the life which enables the mind to compre- 



14 WOODROW WILSON 

hend and make proper use of the modern world 
and all its opportunities. The object of a liberal 
training is not learning, but discipline and the 
enlightenment of the mind. The educated man is 
to be discovered by his point of view, by the temper 
of his mind, by his attitude towards life and his 
fair way of thinking. He can see, he can dis- 
criminate, he can combine ideas and perceive 
whither they lead; he has insight and compre- 
hension. His mind is a practised instrument of 
appreciation. He is more apt to contribute light 
than heat to a discussion, and will oftener than 
another show the power of uniting the elements of 
a difficult subject in a whole view ; he has the 
knowledge of the world which no one can have who 
knows only his own generation or only his own 
task. 

What we should seek to impart in our colleges, 
therefore, is not so much learning itself as the 
spirit of learning. You can impart that to young 
men ; and you can impart it to them in the three 
or four years at your disposal. It consists in the 
power to distinguish good reasoning from bad, in 
the power to digest and interpret evidence, in a 
habit of catholic observation and a preference for 
the non-partisan point of view, in an addiction to 
clear and logical processes of thought and yet an 
instinctive desire to interpret rather than to stick 
in the letter of the reasoning, in a taste for knowl- 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 15 

edge and a deep respect for the integrity of the 
human mind. It is citizenship of the world of 
knowledge, but not ownership of it. Scholars are 
the owners of its varied plots, in severalty. 

If we recognize and accept these ideas, this con- 
ception of the function and the possibilities of the 
college, there is hope of a general understanding 
and accommodation. At present there is a funda- 
mental misunderstanding. The teachers in our 
colleges are men of learning and conceive it their 
duty to impart learning; but their pupils do not 
desire it; and the parents of their pupils do not 
desire it for them. They desire something else 
which the teacher has little thought of giving, gen- 
erally thinks it no part of his function to give. 
Many of the parents of our modern undergradu- 
ates will frankly tell you that what they want for 
their sons is not so much what they will get in 
the class-room as something else, which they are 
at a loss to define, which they will get from the 
associations of college life: and many more would 
say the same thing if they were equally ingenuous. 
I know what they mean, and I am free to say that 
I sympathize with them. They understand that 
all that their boys get in the class-rooom is instruc- 
tion in certain definite bodies of knowledge ; that 
all that they are expected to bring away from 
their lectures and recitations is items of learn- 
ing. They have consorted with college men, 



16 WOODROW WILSON 

if they are not college bred themselves, and 
know how very soon items of knowledge slip 
away from them, no matter how faithful 
and diligent they may have been in accumulating 
them when they were students. They observe 
that that part of the college acquisition is very 
soon lost. College graduates will tell you without 
shame or regret, within ten years of their gradu- 
ation, that they remember practically nothing of 
what they learned in the class-room ; and yet in 
the very same breath they will tell you that they 
would not have lost what they did get in college 
for anything in the world; and men who did not 
have the chance to go to college will everywhere 
be found to envy them, perceiving that college- 
bred men have something which they have not. 
What have they got, if learning is to be left out 
of the reckoning? They have got manliness, cer- 
tainly, esprit de corps, the training of generous 
comradeships, a notable development of their so- 
cial faculties and of their powers of appreciation ; 
and they have lived under the influence of mental 
tasks of greater or less difficulty, have got from 
the class-room itself, from a quiet teacher here 
and there, some intimation, some touch of the 
spirit of learning. If they have not, they have 
got only what could no doubt be got from associa- 
tion with generous, self-respecting young men any- 
where. Attendance on the exercises of the college 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 17 

was only a means of keeping them together for 
four years, to work out their comradeships and 
their mutual infections. 

I said just now that I sympathized with men 
who said that what they wanted for their sons in 
college was not what they got in the class-room 
so much as what they got from the life and asso- 
ciations of the place; but I agree with them only 
if what is to be got in the class-room is nothing 
more than items of knowledge likely to be quickly 
lost hold of. I agree with them ; but I see clearly 
what they are blindly feeling after. They should 
desire chiefly what their sons are to get out of 
the life and associations of the place; but that 
life and those associations should be freighted with 
things they do not now contain. The processes 
of life, the contagions of association, are the only 
things that have ever got any real or permanent 
hold on men's minds. These are the conducting 
media for every effect we seek to work on the hu- 
man spirit. The undergraduate should have schol- 
ars for teachers. They should hold his attention 
steadily upon great tested bodies of knowledge and 
should insist that he make himself acquainted with 
them, if only for the nonce. But they will give 
him nothing he is likely to carry with him through 
life if they stop with formal instruction, however 
thorough or exacting they may make it. Their 
permanent effects will be wrought upon his spirit. 



18 WOODROW WILSON 

Their teaching will follow him through life only if 
they reveal to him the meaning, the significance, 
the essential validity of what they are about, the 
motives which prompt it, the processes which 
verify it. They will rule him, not by what they 
know and inform him of, but by the spirit of the 
things they expound. And that spirit they cannot 
convey in any formal manner. They can convey 
it only atmospherically, by making their ideals 
tell in some way upon the whole spirit of the 
place. 

How shall their pupils carry their spirit away 
with them, or the spirit of the things they teach, 
if beyond the door of the class-room the atmos- 
phere will not contain it? College is a place of 
initiation. Its effects are atmospheric. They are 
wrought by impression, by association, by emula- 
tion. The voices which do not penetrate beyond 
the doors of the class-room are lost, are ineffectual, 
are void of consequence and power. No thought 
will obtain or live there for the transmission of 
which the prevailing atmosphere is a non-conduct- 
ing medium. If young gentlemen get from their 
years at college only manliness, esprit de corps, a 
release of their social gifts, a training in give and 
take, a catholic taste in men, and the standards of 
true sportsmen, they have gained much, but they 
have not gained what a college should give them. 
It should give them insight into the things of the 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 19 

mind and of the spirit, a sense of having lived 
and formed their friendships amidst the gardens 
of the mind where grows the tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil, a consciousness of having taken 
on them the vows of true enlightenment and of 
having undergone the discipline, never to be 
shaken off, of those who seek wisdom in candor, 
with faithful labor and travail of spirit. 

These things they cannot get from the class- 
room unless the spirit of the class-room is the spirit 
of the place as well and of its life; and that will 
never be until the teacher comes out of the class- 
room and makes himself a part of that life. Con- 
tact, companionship, familiar intercourse is the 
law of life for the mind. The comradeships of 
undergraduates will never breed the spirit of learn- 
ing. The circle must be widened. It must include 
the older men, the teachers, the men for whom 
life has grown more serious and to whom it has 
revealed more of its meanings. So long as instruc- 
tion and life do not merge in our colleges, so long 
as what the undergraduates do and what they are 
taught occupy two separate, air-tight compart- 
ments in their consciousness, so long will the col- 
lege be ineffectual. 

Looked at from the point of view at which I 
stand in all that I have been saying, some of the 
proposals made in our day for the improvement 
of the college seem very strangely conceived. It 



20 WOODROW WILSON 

has been proposed, for example, to shorten the 
period of general study in college to (say) two 
years, and let the student who has gone the dis- 
tance our present sophomores have gone enter at 
once upon his professional studies or receive his 
certificate of graduation. I take it for granted 
that those who have formulated this proposal never 
really knew a sophomore in the flesh. They 
say, simply, that the studies of our present 
sophomores are as advanced as the studies of 
seniors were in the great days of our 
grandfathers, and that most of our present 
sophomores are as old as our grandfathers were 
when they graduated from the pristine college 
we so often boast of; and I dare say 
that is all true enough. But what they do not 
know is, that our sophomore is at the age of 
twenty no more mature than the sophomore of that 
previous generation was at the age of seventeen 
or eighteen. The sap of manhood is rising in him 
but it has not yet reached his head. It is not 
what a man is studying that makes him a sopho- 
more or a senior : it is the stage the college process 
has reached in him. A college, the American col- 
lege, is not a body of studies : it is a process of 
development. It takes, if our observation can be 
trusted, at least four years for the completion of 
that process, and all four of those years must be 
college years. They cannot be school years : they 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 21 

cannot be combined with school years. The school 
process is an entirely different one. The college 
is a process of slow evolution from the schoolboy 
and the schoolboy's mental attitude into the man 
and his entirely altered view of the world. It can 
be accomplished only in the college environment. 
The environment is of the essence of the whole 
effect. 

If you wish to create a college, therefore, and 
are wise, you will seek to create a life. We have 
allowed ourselves to grow very anxious and to feel 
very helpless about college athletics. They play 
too large a part in the life of the undergraduate, 
we say; and no doubt they do. There are many 
other things which play too large a part in that 
life, to the exclusion of intellectual interests and 
the dissipation of much excellent energy: amuse- 
ments of all kinds, social preoccupations of the 
most absorbing sort, a multitude of activities which 
have nothing whatever to do with the discipline 
and enlightenment of the mind. But that is be- 
cause they are left a free field. Life, at college, is 
one thing, the work of the college another, entirely 
separate and distinct. The life is the field that is 
left free for athletics not only but also for every 
other amusement and diversion. Studies are no 
part of that life, and there is no competition. 
Study is the work which interrupts the life, intro- 
duces an embarrassing and inconsistent element 



22 WOODROW WILSON 

into it. The Faculty has no part in the life; it 
organizes the interruption, the interference. 

This is not to say that there are not a great 
many undergraduates seriously interested in study, 
or that it is impossible or even difficult to make 
the majority of them, the large majority, pass the 
tests of the examinations. It is only saying that 
the studies do not spring out of the life of the 
place and are hindered by it, must resist its influ- 
ences if they would flourish. I have no jealousy 
of athletics : it has put wholesome spirit into both 
the physical and the mental life of our undergrad- 
uates. There are fewer morbid boys in the new 
college which we know than there were in the old 
college which our fathers knew ; and fewer prigs, 
too, no doubt. Athletics are indispensable to the 
normal life of young men, and are in themselves 
wholesome and delightful, besides. In another at- 
mosphere, the atmosphere of learning, they could 
be easily subordinated and assimilated. The rea- 
son they cannot be now is that there is nothing to 
assimilate them, nothing by which they can be 
digested. They make their own atmosphere un- 
molested. There is no direct competition. 

The same thing may be said, for it is true, of 
all the other amusements and all the social activi- 
ties of the little college world. Their name is 
legion: they are very interesting; most of them 
are in themselves quite innocent and legitimate; 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 23 

many of them are thoroughly worth while. They 
now engross the attention and absorb the energies 
of most of the finest, most spirited, most gifted 
youngsters in the undergraduate body, men fit to 
be scholars and masters in many fields, and for 
whom these small things are too trivial a prepara- 
tion. They would not do so if other things which 
would be certain to grip these very men were in 
competition with them, were known and spoken 
of and pervasive in the life of the college outside 
the class-room; but they are not. The field is 
clear for all these little activities, as it is clear 
for athletics. Athletics has no serious competitor 
except these amusements and petty engrossments ; 
they have no serious competitor except athletics. 
The scholar is not in the game. He keeps modestly 
to his class-room and his study and must be looked 
up and asked questions if you would know what 
he is thinking about. His influence can be set 
going only by the deliberate effort of the under- 
graduate himself who looks him up and stirs him. 
He deplores athletics and all the other absorbing 
and non-academic pursuits which he sees drawing 
the attention of his pupils off from study and 
serious preparation for life, but he will not enter 
into competition with them. He has never dreamed 
of such a thing; and, to tell the truth, the life 
of the place is organized in such a way as to make 



24 WOODROW WILSON 

it hardly possible for him to do so. He is there- 
fore withdrawn and ineffectual. 

It is the duty of university authorities to make 
of the college a society, of which the teacher will 
be as much, and as naturally, a member as the 
undergraduate. When that is done other things 
will fall into their natural places, their natural 
relations. Young men are capable of great en- 
thusiasms for older men whom they have learned 
to know in some human, unartificial way, whose 
quality they have tasted in unconstrained con- 
versation, the energy and beauty of whose char- 
acters and aims they have learned to appreciate 
by personal contact; and such enthusiasms are 
often among the strongest and most lasting influ- 
ences of their lives. You will not gain the affec- 
tion of your pupil by anything you do for him, 
impersonally, in the class-room. You may gain 
his admiration and vague appreciation, but he 
will tie to you only for what you have shown him 
personally or given him in intimate and friendly 
service. 

Certain I am that it is impossible to rid our 
colleges of these things that compete with study 
and drive out the spirit of learning by the simple 
device of legislation, in which, as Americans, we 
have so childish a confidence ; or, at least, that, if 
we did succeed in driving them out, did set our 
house in order and sweep and garnish it, other 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 25 

equally distracting occupants would crowd in to 
take their places. For the house would be empty. 
There must be life as well as study. The question 
is, not of what are we to empty it, but with what 
must we fill it? We must fill it with the things 
of the mind and of the spirit ; and that we can 
do by introducing into it men for whom these 
things are supremely interesting, the main objects 
of life and endeavor, teachers who will not seem 
pedagogues but friends, and who can by the gentle 
infection of friendliness make thought a general 
contagion. Do that ; create the atmosphere and 
the contacts of a society made up of men young 
and old, mature and adolescent, serious and gay, 
and you will create an emulation, a saturation, 
a vital union of parts in a common life, in which 
all questions of subordination and proportion will 
solve themselves. So soon as the things which now 
dissipate and distract and dissolve our college life 
feel the things which should coordinate and regu- 
late and inspire it in direct contact with them, 
feel their ardor and their competition, they will 
fall into their proper places, will become pleasures 
and cease to be occupations, will delight our under- 
graduate days, but not monopolize them. They 
are exaggerated now because they are separated 
and do not exchange impulses with those greater 
things of whose presence they are sometimes 
hardly conscious. 



26 WOODROW WILSON 

No doubt there are many ways in which this 
vital association may be effected, but all wise and 
successful ways will have this in common, that they 
will abate nothing of the freedom and self-govern- 
ment which have so quickened and purified our col- 
leges in these recent days of change, will have no 
touch of school surveillance in them. You cannot 
force companionships upon undergraduates, if you 
treat them like men. You can only create the con- 
ditions, set up the organization, which will make 
them natural. The scholar should not need a 
statute behind him. The spirit of learning should 
not covet the support of the spirit and organiza- 
tion of the nursery. It will prevail of its own 
grace and power if you will but give it a chance, 
a conducting medium, an air in which it can move 
and breathe freely without effort or self-conscious- 
ness. If it cannot, I, for one, am unwilling to lend 
it artificial assistance. It must take its chances in 
the competition and win on its merits, under the 
ordinary rules of the game of life, where the most 
interesting man attracts attention, the strongest 
personality rules, the best organized force pre- 
dominates, the most admirable thing wins al- 
legiance. We are not seeking to force a marriage 
between knowledge and pleasure ; we are simply 
trying to throw them a great deal together in the 
confidence that they will fall in love with one an- 
other. We are seeking to expose the undergrad- 



THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING 27 

uate when he is most susceptible to the best and 
most stimulating influences of the university in 
the hope and belief that no sensible fellow fit for 
a career can resist the infection. 

My plea, then, is this : that we now deliberately 
set ourselves to make a home for the spirit of 
learning: that we reorganize our colleges on the 
lines of this simple conception, that a college is 
not only a body of studies but a mode of associa- 
tion ; that its courses are only its formal side, its 
contacts and contagions its realities. It must 
become a community of scholars and pupils, a 
free community but a very real one, in which 
democracy may work its reasonable triumphs of 
accommodation, its vital processes of union. I am 
not suggesting that young men be dragooned into 
becoming scholars or tempted to become pedants, 
or have any artificial compulsion whatever put 
upon them, but only that they be introduced into 
the high society of university ideals, be exposed 
to the hazards of stimulating friendships, be intro- 
duced into the easy comradeships of the republic 
of letters. By this means the class-room itself 
might some day come to seem a part of life. 




IN the discussions concerning college education 
there is one voice which is all too seldom raised 
and all too often disregarded. It is the voice of 
the teacher and the scholar, of the member of the 
college faculty. It is my purpose to devote this 
address to a consideration of the ideals of the 
teacher, of the problems of instruction as they 
present themselves to the men who are giving the 
instruction. And I do this not because I believe 
that just now the teachers are wiser than others 
who are dealing with the same questions, but 
rather as an expression of a definite conviction 
with regard to the place of the teacher in our 
educational scheme. It is, I believe, the function 
of the teacher to stand before his pupils and be- 
fore the community at large as the intellectual 
leader of his time. If he is not able to take this 
leadership, he is not worthy of his calling. If the 
leadership is taken from him and given to others, 

1 Delivered by the President of Amherst College, on Octo- 
ber 16, 1912. Reprinted through the generous permission of 
Alexander Meiklejohn and of The Amherst Graduates' Quar- 
terly. 

28 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 29 

then the very foundations of the scheme of instruc- 
tion are shaken. He who in matters of teaching 
must be led by others is not the one to lead the 
imitative undergraduate, not the one to inspire 
the confidence and loyalty and discipleship on 
which all true teaching depends. If there are 
others who can do these things better than the 
college teacher of to-day, then we must bring them 
within the college walls. But if the teacher is to 
be deemed worthy of his task, then he must be 
recognized as the teacher of us all, and we must 
listen to his words as he speaks of the matters 
entrusted to his charge. 

In the consideration of the educational creed of 
the teacher I will try to give, first, a brief state- 
ment of his belief; second, a defense of it against 
other views of the function of the college ; third, 
an interpretation of its meaning and significance; 
fourth, a criticism of what seem to me misunder- 
standings of their own meaning prevalent among 
the teachers of our day ; and finally, a suggestion 
of certain changes in policy which must follow 
if the belief of the teacher is clearly understood 
and applied in our educational procedure. 



First, then, What do our teachers believe to be 
the aim of college instruction? Wherever their 



30 

opinions and convictions find expression there is 
one contention which is always in the foreground, 
namely, that to be liberal a college must be essen- 
tially intellectual. It is a place, the teachers tell 
us, in which a boy, forgetting all things else, may 
set forth on the enterprise of learning. It is a 
time when a young man may come to awareness 
of the thinking of his people, may perceive what 
knowledge is and has been and is to be. Whatever 
light-hearted undergraduates may say, whatever 
the opinions of solicitous parents, of ambitious 
friends, of employers in search of workmen, of 
leaders in church or state or business, whatever 
may be the beliefs and desires and demands of 
outsiders, the teacher within the college, know- 
ing his mission as no one else can know it, pro- 
claims that mission to be the leading of his pupil 
into the life intellectual. The college is primarily 
not a place of the body, nor of the feelings, nor 
even of the will; it is, first of all, a place of the 
mind. 

II 

Against this intellectual interpretation of the 
college our teachers find two sets of hostile forces 
constantly at work. Outside the walls there are 
the practical demands of a busy commercial and 
social scheme ; within the college there are the 
trivial and sentimental and irrational misunder- 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 31 

standings of its own friends. Upon each of these 
our college teachers are wont to descend as Sam- 
son upon the Philistines, and when they have had 
their will, there is little left for another to accom- 
plish. 

As against the immediate practical demands 
from without, the issue is clear and decisive. Col- 
lege teachers know that the world must have 
trained workmen, skilled operatives, clever buyers 
and sellers, efficient directors, resourceful manu- 
facturers, able lawyers, ministers, physicians, and 
teachers. But it is equally true that in order to 
do its own work, the liberal college must leave the 
special and technical training for these trades and 
professions to be done in other schools and by 
other methods. In a word, the liberal college does 
not pretend to give all the kinds of teaching which 
a young man of college age may profitably receive ; 
it does not even claim to give all the kinds of intel- 
lectual training which are worth giving. It is 
committed to intellectual training of the liberal 
type, whatever that may mean, and to that mission 
it must be faithful. One may safely say, then, 
on behalf of our college teachers, that their in- 
struction is intended to be radically different from 
that given in the technical school or even in the 
professional school. Both these institutions are 
practical in a sense which the college, as an intel- 
lectual institution, is not. In the technical school 



32 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

the pupil is taught how to do some one of the 
mechanical operations which contribute to human 
welfare. He is trained to print, to weave, to farm, 
to build; and for the most part he is trained to 
do these things by practice rather than by theory. 
His possession when he leaves the school is not a 
stock of ideas, of scientific principles, but a meas- 
ure of skill, a collection of rules of thumb. His 
primary function as a tradesman is not to under- 
stand but to do, and in doing what is needed he 
is following directions which have first been 
thought out by others and are now practised by 
him. The technical school intends to furnish 
training which, in the sense in which we use the 
term, is not intellectual but practical. 

In a corresponding way the work of the profes- 
sional school differs from that of the liberal 
college. In the teaching of engineering, medicine, 
or law we are or may be beyond the realm of 
mere skill and within the realm of ideas and prin- 
ciples. But the selection and the relating of these 
ideas is dominated by an immediate practical inter- 
est which cuts them off from the intellectual point 
of view of the scholar. If an undergraduate 
should take away from his studies of chemistry, 
biology, and psychology only those parts which 
have immediate practical application in the field 
of medicine, the college teachers would feel that 
they had failed to give to the boy the kind of 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 33 

instruction demanded of a college. It is not their 
purpose to furnish applied knowledge in this sense. 
They are not willing to cut up their sciences into 
segments and to allow the student to select those 
segments which may be of service in the practice 
of an art or a profession. In one way or another 
the teacher feels a kinship with the scientist and 
the scholar which forbids him to submit to this 
domination of his instruction by the demands of an 
immediate practical interest. Whatever it may 
mean, he intends to hold the intellectual point of 
view and to keep his students with him if he can. 
In response, then, to demands for technical and 
professional training our college teachers tell us 
that such training may be obtained in other 
schools ; it is not to be had in a college of liberal 
culture. 

In the conflict with the forces within the col- 
lege our teachers find themselves fighting essen- 
tially the same battle as against the foes without. 
In a hundred different ways the friends of the 
college, students, graduates, trustees, and even col- 
leagues, seem to them so to misunderstand its 
mission as to minimize or to falsify its intellectual 
ideals. The college is a good place for making 
friends ; it gives excellent experience in getting on 
with men ; it has exceptional advantages as an 
athletic club ; it is a relatively safe place for a boy 
when he first leaves home; on the whole it may 



34 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

improve a student's manners ; it gives acquaintance 
with lofty ideals of character, preaches the doc- 
trine of social service, exalts the virtues and duties 
of citizenship. All these conceptions seem to the 
teacher to hide or to obscure the fact that the 
college is fundamentally a place of the mind, a 
time for thinking, an opportunity for knowing. 
And perhaps in proportion to their own loftiness 
of purpose and motive they are the more danger- 
ous as tending all the more powerfully to replace 
or to nullify the underlying principle upon which 
they all depend. Here again when misconception 
clears away, one can have no doubt that the battle 
of the teacher is a righteous one. It is well that 
a boy should have four good years of athletic 
sport, playing his own games and watching the 
games of his fellows; it is well that his manners 
should be improved ; it is worth while to make good 
friends ; it is very desirable to develop the power 
of understanding and working with other men ; 
it is surely good to grow in strength and purity 
of character, in devotion to the interests of so- 
ciety, in readiness to meet the obligations and op- 
portunities of citizenship. If any one of these be 
lacking from the fruits of a college course we may 
well complain of the harvest. And yet is it not 
true that by sheer pressure of these, by the driving 
and pulling of the social forces within and without 
the college, the mind of the student is constantly 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 35 

torn from its chief concern? Do not our social 
and practical interests distract our boys from 
the intellectual achievements which should dom- 
inate their imagination and command their zeal? 
I believe that one may take it as the deliberate 
judgment of the teachers of our colleges to-day 
that the function of the college is constantly mis- 
understood, and that it is subjected to demands 
which, however friendly in intent, are yet destruc- 
tive of its intellectual efficiency and success. 

Ill 

But now that the contention of the teacher has 
been stated and reaffirmed against objections, it 
is time to ask, What does it mean? And how 
can it be justified? By what might does a com- 
pany of scholars invite young men to spend with 
them four years of discipleship? Do they, in 
their insistence upon the intellectual quality of 
their ideal, intend to give an education which is 
avowedly unpractical? If so, how shall they 
justify their invitation, which may perhaps divert 
young men from other interests and other com- 
panionships which are valuable to themselves and 
to their fellows? In a word, what is the under- 
lying motive of the teacher, what is there in the 
intellectual interests and activities which seems to 
him to warrant their domination over the training 



36 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

and instruction of young men during the college 
years ? 

It is no fair answer to this question to summon 
us to faith in intellectual ideals, to demand of us 
that we live the life of the mind with confidence 
in the virtues of intelligence, that we love knowl- 
edge and because of our passion follow after it. 
Most of us are already eager to accept intellectual 
ideals, but our very devotion to them forbids that 
we accept them blindly. I have often been struck 
by the inner contradictoriness of the demand that 
we have faith in intelligence. It seems to mean, 
as it is so commonly made to mean, that we must 
unintelligently follow intelligence, that we must 
ignorantly pursue knowledge, that we must ques- 
tion everything except the business of asking 
questions, that we think about everything except 
the use of thinking itself. As Mr. F. H. Bradley 
would say, the dictum, " Have faith in intelli- 
gence," is so true that it constantly threatens to 
become false. Our very conviction of its truth 
compels us to scrutinize and test it to the end. 

How then shall we justify the faith of the 
teacher? What reason can we give for our exalta- 
tion of intellectual training and activity? To this 
question two answers are possible. First, knowl- 
edge and thinking are good in themselves. Sec- 
ondly, they help us in the attainment of other 
values in life which without them would be im- 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 37 

possible. Both these answers may be given and 
are given by college teachers. Within them must 
be found whatever can be said by way of explana- 
tion and justification of the work of the liberal 
college. 

The first answer receives just now far less of 
recognition than it can rightly claim. When the 
man of the world is told that a boy is to be trained 
in thinking just because of the joys and satisfac- 
tions of thinking itself, just in order that he may 
go on thinking as long as he lives, the man of the 
world has been heard to scoff and to ridicule the 
idle dreaming of scholarly men. But if thinking 
is not a good thing in itself, if intellectual activity 
is not worth while for its own sake, will the man 
of the world tell us what is? There are those 
among us who find so much satisfaction in the 
countless trivial and vulgar amusements of a crude 
people that they have no time for the joys of the 
mind. There are those who are so closely shut 
up within a little round of petty pleasures that 
.they have never dreamed of the fun of reading 
and conversing and investigating and reflecting. 
And of these one can only say that the difference 
is one of taste, and that their tastes seem to be 
relatively dull and stupid. Surely it is one func- 
tion of the liberal college to save boys from that 
stupidity, to give them an appetite for the pleas- 
ures of thinking, to make them sensitive to the 



38 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

joys of appreciation and understanding, to show 
them how sweet and captivating and wholesome 
are the games of the mind. At the time when the 
play element is still dominant it is worth while to 
acquaint boys with the sport of facing and solving 
problems. Apart from some of the experiences 
of friendship and sympathy I doubt if there are 
any human interests so permanently satisfying, 
so fine and splendid in themselves as are those of 
intellectual activity. To give our boys that zest, 
that delight in things intellectual, to give them an 
appreciation of a kind of life which is well worth 
living, to make them men of intellectual culture 
that certainly is one part of the work of any 
liberal college. 

On the other hand, the creation of culture as so 
defined can never constitute the full achievement 
of the college. It is essential to awaken the im- 
pulses of inquiry, of experiment, of investigation, 
of reflection, the instinctive cravings of the mind. 
But no liberal college can be content with this. 
The impulse to thinking must be questioned and 
rationalized as must every other instinctive re- 
sponse. It is well to think, but what shall we think 
about? Are there any lines of investigation and 
reflection more valuable than others, and if so, 
how is their value to be tested? Or again, if the 
impulse for thinking comes into conflict with other 
desires and cravings, how is the opposition to be 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 39 

solved? It has sometimes been suggested that our 
man of intellectual culture may be found like Nero 
fiddling with words while all the world about him 
is aflame. And the point of the suggestion is not 
that fiddling is a bad and worthless pastime, but 
rather that it is inopportune on such an occasion, 
that the man who does it is out of touch with his 
situation, that his fiddling does not fit his facts. 
In a word, men know with regard to thinking, as 
with regard to every other content of human ex- 
perience, that it cannot be valued merely in terms 
of itself. It must be measured in terms of its rela- 
tion to other contents and to human experience 
as a whole. Thinking is good in itself, but what 
does it cost of other things, what does it bring 
of other values? Place it amid all the varied con- 
tents of our individual and social experience, 
measure it in terms of what it implies, fix it by 
means of its relations, and then you will know its 
worth not simply in itself but in that deeper sense 
which comes when human desires are rationalized 
and human lives are known in their entirety, as 
'well as they can be known by those who are en- 
gaged in living them. 

In this consideration we find the second answer 
of the teacher to the demand for justification of 
the work of the college. Knowledge is good, he 
tells us, not only in itself, but in its enrichment 
and enhancement of the other values of our ex- 



40 

perience. In the deepest and fullest sense of the 
words, knowledge pays. This statement rests 
upon the classification of human actions into two 
groups, those of the instinctive type and those of 
the intellectual type. By far the greater part of 
our human acts are carried on without any clear 
idea of what we are going to do or how we are 
going to do it. For the most part our responses to 
our situations are the immediate responses of feel- 
ing, of perception, of custom, of tradition. But 
slowly and painfully, as the mind has developed, 
action after action has been translated from the 
feeling to the ideational type ; in wider and wider 
fields men have become aware of their own modes 
of action, more and more they have come to under- 
standing, to knowledge of themselves and of their 
needs. And the principle underlying all our edu- 
cational procedure is that on the whole, actions 
become more successful as they pass from the 
sphere of feeling to that of understanding. Our 
educational belief is that in the long run if men 
know what they are going to do and how they are 
going to do it, and what is the nature of the situa- 
tion with which they are dealing, their response 
to that situation will be better adjusted and more 
beneficial than are the responses of the feeling type 
in like situations. 

It is all too obvious that there are limits to the 
validity of this principle. If men are to invest!- 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 41 

gate, to consider, to decide, then action must be 
delayed and we must pay the penalty of waiting. 
If men are to endeavor to understand and know 
their situations, then we must be prepared to see 
them make mistakes in their thinking, lose their 
certainty of touch, wander off into pitfalls and 
illusions and fallacies of thought, and in conse- 
quence secure for the time results far lower in 
value than those of the instinctive response which 
they seek to replace. The delays and mistakes and 
uncertainties of our thinking are a heavy price to 
pay, but it is the conviction of the teacher that 
the price is as nothing when compared with the 
goods which it buys. You may point out to him 
the loss when old methods of procedure give way 
before the criticism of understanding, you may 
remind him of the pain and suffering when old 
habits of thought and action are replaced, you 
may reprove him for all the blunders of the past ; 
but in spite of it all he knows and you know that 
in human lives taken separately and in human life 
as a whole men's greatest lack is the lack of un- 
derstanding, their greatest hope to know them- 
selves and the world in which they live. 

Within the limits of this general educational 
principle the place of the liberal college may 
easily be fixed. In the technical school pupils 
are prepared for a specific work and are kept for 
the most part on the plane of perceptual action, 



42 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

doing work which others understand. In the pro- 
fessional school, students are properly within the 
realm of ideas and principles, but they are still 
limited to a specific human interest with which 
alone their understanding is concerned. But the 
college is called liberal as against both of these 
because the instruction is dominated by no special 
interest, is limited to no single human task, but 
is intended to take human activity as a whole, to 
understand human endeavors not in their isolation 
but in their relations to one another and to the 
total experience which we call the life of our peo- 
ple. And just as we believe that the building of 
ships has become more successful as men have 
come to a knowledge of the principles involved 
in their construction ; just as the practice of medi- 
cine has become more successful as we have come 
to a knowledge of the human body, of the condi- 
tions within it and the influences without; just 
so the teacher in the liberal college believes that 
life as a total enterprise, life as it presents itself 
to each one of us in his career as an individual, 
human living, will be more successful in so far 
as men come to understand it and to know it as 
they attempt to carry it on. To give boys an 
intellectual grasp on human experience this it 
seems to me is the teacher's conception of the chief 
function of the liberal college. 

May I call attention to the fact that this second 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 43 

answer of the teacher defines the aim of the college 
as avowedly and frankly practical. Knowledge is 
to be sought chiefly for the sake of its contribu- 
tion to the other activities of human living. But 
on the other hand, it is as definitely declared that 
in method the college is fully and unreservedly 
intellectual. If we can see that these two demands 
are not in conflict but that they stand together 
in the harmonious relation of means and ends, of 
instrument and achievement, of method and result, 
we may escape many a needless conflict and keep 
our educational policy in singleness of aim and 
action. To do this we must show that the college 
is intellectual, not as opposed to practical interests 
and purposes, but as opposed to unpractical and 
unwise methods of work. The issue is not between 
practical and intellectual aims but between the 
immediate and the remote aim, between the hasty 
and the measured procedure, between the demand 
for results at once and the willingness to wait for 
the best results. The intellectual road to success 
is longer and more roundabout than any other, 
but they who are strong and willing for the climb- 
ing are brought to higher levels of achievement 
than they could possibly have attained had they 
gone straight forward in the pathway of quick 
returns. If this were not true the liberal college 
would have no proper place in our life at all. In 
so far as it is true the college has a right to claim 



44 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

the best of our young men to give them its prep- 
aration for the living they are to do. 



IV 

But now that we have attempted to interpret 
the intellectual mission of the college, it may be 
fair to ask, " Are the teachers and scholars of 
our day always faithful to that mission? Do 
their statements and their practice always ring in 
accord with the principle which has been stated? " 
It seems to me that at two points they are con- 
stantly off the key, constantly at variance with 
the reasons by which alone their teaching can be 
justified. 

In the first place, it often appears as if our 
teachers and scholars were deliberately in league 
to mystify and befog the popular mind regarding 
this practical value of intellectual work. They 
seem not to wish too much said about the results 
and benefits. Their desire is to keep aloft the 
intellectual banner, to proclaim the intellectual 
gospel, to demand of student and public alike 
adherence to the faith. And in general when they 
are questioned as to results they give little satis- 
faction except to those who are already pledged 
to unwavering confidence in their ipse dixits. And 
largely as a result of this attitude the American 
people seem to me to have little understanding 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 45 

of the intellectual work of the college. Our citi- 
zens and patrons can see the value of games and 
physical exercises ; they readily perceive the im- 
portance of the social give and take of a college 
democracy ; they can appreciate the value of 
studies which prepare a young man for his pro- 
fession and so anticipate or replace the profes- 
sional school ; they can even believe that if a boy is 
kept at some sort of thinking for four years his 
mind may become more acute, more systematic, 
more accurate, and hence more useful than it was 
before. But as for the content of a college course, 
as for the value of knowledge, what a boy gains 
by knowing Greek or economics, philosophy or 
literature, history or biology, except as they are 
regarded as having professional usefulness, I think 
our friends are in the dark and are likely to remain 
so until we turn on the light. When our teachers 
say, as they sometimes do say, that the effect of 
knowledge upon the character and life of the 
student must always be for the college an accident, 
a circumstance which has no essential connection 
with its real aim or function, then it seems to me 
that our educational policy is wholly out of joint. 
If there be no essential connection between instruc- 
tion and life, then there is no reason for giving 
instruction except in so far as it is pleasant in 
itself, and we have no educational policy at all. 
As against this hesitancy, this absence of a con- 



46 

viction, we men of the college should declare in 
clear and unmistakable terms our creed the creed 
that knowledge is justified by its results. We 
should say to our people so plainly that they 
cannot misunderstand, " Give us your boys, give 
us the means we need, and we will so train and 
inform the minds of those boys that their own 
lives and the lives of the men about them shall 
be more successful than they could be without 
our training. Give us our chance and we will 
show your boys what human living is, for we are 
convinced that they can live better in knowledge 
than the}' can in ignorance." 

There is a second wandering from the faith 
which is so common among investigators that it 
may fairly be called the " fallacy of the scholar." 
It is the belief that all knowledge is so good that 
all parts of knowledge are equally good. Ask 
many of our scholars and teachers what subjects 
a boy should study in order that he may gain 
insight for human living, and they will say, " It 
makes no difference in what department of knowl- 
edge he studies ; let him go into Sanscrit or bac- 
teriology, into mathematics or history ; if only 
he goes where men are actually dealing with intel- 
lectual problems, and if only he learns how to deal 
with problems himself, the aim of education is 
achieved, he has entered into intellectual activity." 
This point of view, running through all the varie- 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 47 

ties of the elective system, seems to me hopelessly 
at variance with any sound educational doctrine. 
It represents the scholar of the day at his worst 
both as a thinker and as a teacher. In so far as 
it dominates a group of college teachers it seems 
to me to render them unfit to determine and to 
administer a college curriculum. It is an an- 
nouncement that they have no guiding principles 
in their educational practice, no principles of se- 
lection in their arrangement of studies, no genuine 
grasp on the relationship between knowledge and 
life. It is the concerted statement of a group of 
men each of whom is lost within the limits of his 
own special studies, and who as a group seem not 
to realize the organic relationships between them 
nor the common task which should bind them to- 
gether. 

In bringing this second criticism against our 
scholars I am not urging that the principle of 
election of college studies should be entirely dis- 
continued. But I should like to inquire by what 
, right and within what limits it is justified. The 
most familiar argument in its favor is that if a 
student is allowed to choose along the lines of 
his own intellectual or professional interest he will 
have enthusiasm, the eagerness which comes with 
the following of one's own bent. Now just so far 
as this result is achieved, just so far as the quality 
of scholarship is improved, the procedure is good 



48 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

and we may follow it if we do not thereby lose 
other results more valuable than our gain. But 
if the special interest comes into conflict with 
more fundamental ones, if what the student prefers 
is opposed to what he ought to prefer, then we of 
the college cannot leave the choice with him. We 
must say to him frankly, " If you do not care for 
liberal training you had better go elsewhere ; we 
have a special and definite task assigned us 
which demands that we keep free from the domina- 
tion of special or professional pursuits. So long 
as we are faithful to that task we cannot give you 
what you ask." 

In my opinion, however, the fundamental mo- 
tive of the elective system is not the one which 
has been mentioned. In the last resort our teach- 
ers allow students to choose their own studies not 
in order to appeal to intellectual or to profes- 
sional interest, but because they themselves have 
no choice of their own in which they believe with 
sufficient intensity to impose it upon their pupils. 
And this lack of a dominating educational policy 
is in turn an expression of an intellectual attitude, 
a point of view, which marks the scholars of our 
time. In a word, it seems to me that our willing- 
ness to allow students to wander about in the 
college curriculum is one of the most characteristic 
expressions of a certain intellectual agnosticism, 
a kind of intellectual bankruptcy, into which, in 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 49 

spite of all our wealth of information, the spirit 
of the time has fallen. Let me explain my 
meaning. 

The old classical curriculum was founded by 
men who had a theory of the world and of human 
life. They had taken all the available content of 
human knowledge and had wrought it together into 
a coherent whole. What they knew was, as judged 
by our standards, very little in amount. But upon 
that little content they had expended all the in- 
finite pains of understanding and interpretation. 
They had taken the separate judgments of science, 
philosophy, history, and the arts, and had so 
welded them together, so established their rela- 
tionships with one another, so freed them from 
contradictions and ambiguities that, so far as 
might be in their day and generation, human life 
as a whole and the world about us were known, 
were understood, were rationalized. They had 
a knowledge of human experience by which they 
could live and which they could teach to others 
engaged in the activities of living. 

But with the invention of methods of scientific 
investigation and discovery there came pouring 
into the mind of Europe great masses of intellect- 
ual material, astronomy, physics, chemistry. 
This content for a time it could not understand, 
could not relate to what it already knew. The 
old boundary lines did not enclose the new fields, 



50 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

the old explanations and interpretations would 
not fit the new facts. Knowledge had not grown, 
it had simply been enlarged, and the two masses 
of content, the old and the new, stood facing each 
other with no common ground of understanding. 
Here was the intellectual task of the great leaders 
of the early modern thought of Europe: to re- 
establish the unity of knowledge, to discover the 
relationships between these apparently hostile 
bodies of judgments, to know the world again, but 
with all the added richness of the new insights and 
the new information. This was the work of Leib- 
nitz and Spinoza, of Kant and Hegel, and those 
who labored with them. And in a very considera- 
ble measure the task had been accomplished, order 
had been restored. But again with the inrush 
of the newer discoveries, first in the field of biology 
and then later in the world of human relationships, 
the difficulties have returned, multiplied a thou- 
sand fold. Every day sees a new field of facts 
opened up, a new method of investigation invented, 
a new department of knowledge established. And 
in the rush of it all these new sciences come merely 
as additions, not to be understood but simply num- 
bered, not to be interpreted but simply listed in 
the great collection of separate fields of knowl- 
edge. If you will examine the work of any scientist 
within one of these fields you will find him ordering, 
systematizing, reducing to principles, in a word, 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 51 

knowing every fact in terms of its relation to every 
other fact and to the whole field within which it 
falls. But at the same time these separate 
sciences, these separate groups of judgment, are 
left standing side by side with no intelligible con- 
nections, no establishment of relationships, no in- 
terpretation in the sense in which we insist upon 
it with each of the fields taken by itself. Is it not 
the characteristic statement of a scholar of our 
time to say, " I do not know what may be the ulti- 
mate significance of these facts and these prin- 
ciples ; all that I know is that if you will follow 
my methods within my field you will find the facts 
coining into order, the principles coming into sim- 
ple and coherent arrangement. With any prob- 
lems apart from this order and this arrangement 
I have intellectually no concern." 

It has become an axiom with us that the genuine 
student labors within his own field. And if the 
student ventures forth to examine the relations 
of his field to the surrounding country he very 
easily becomes a popularizer, a litterateur, a spec- 
ulator, and worst of all, unscientific. Now I do 
not object to a man's minding his own intellectual 
business if he chooses to do so, but when a man 
minds his own business because he does not know 
any other business, because he has no knowledge 
whatever of the relationships which justify his 
business and make it worth while, then I think one 



52 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

may say that though such a man minds his own 
affairs he does not know them, he does not under- 
stand them. Such a man, from the point of view 
of the demands of a liberal education, differs in 
no essential respect from the tradesman who does 
not understand his trade or the professional man 
who merely practices his profession. Just as truly 
as they, he is shut up within a special interest ; 
just as truly as they he is making no intellectual 
attempt to understand his experience in its unity. 
And the pity of it is that more and more the chairs 
in our colleges are occupied by men who have only 
this special interest, this specialized information, 
and it is through them that we attempt to give 
our boys a liberal education, which the teachers 
themselves have not achieved. 

I should not like to be misunderstood in making 
this railing accusation against our teachers and 
our time. If I say that our knowledge is at pres- 
ent a collection of scattered observations about the 
world rather than an understanding of it, fairness 
compels the admission that the failure is due to 
the inherent difficulties of the situation and to the 
novelty of the problems presented. If I cry out 
against the agnosticism of our people it is not as 
one who has escaped from it, nor as one who 
would point the way back to the older synthesis, 
but simply as one who believes that the time has 
come for a reconstruction, for a new synthesis. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 53 

We have had time enough now to get some notion 
of our bearings, shocks enough to get over our 
nervousness and discomfiture when a new one comes 
along. It is the opportunity and the obligation 
of this generation to think through the content of 
our knowing once again, to understand it, so far 
as we can. And in such a battle as this, surely 
it is the part of the college to take the lead. Here 
is the mission of the college teacher as of no other 
member of our common life. Surely he should 
stand before his pupils and before all of us as a 
man who has achieved some understanding of this 
human situation of ours, but more than that, as 
one who is eager for the conflict with the powers 
of darkness and who can lead his pupils in enthusi- 
astic devotion to the common cause of enlighten- 
ment. 



And now, finally, after these attacks upon the 
policies which other men have derived from their 
love of knowledge, may I suggest two matters of 
policy which seem to me to follow from the defini- 
tion of education which we have taken. The first 
concerns the content of the college course; the 
second has to do with the method of its presenta- 
tion to the undergraduate. 

We have said that the system of free election is 
natural for those to whom knowledge is simply a 



54 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

number of separate departments. It is equally 
true that just in so far as knowledge attains unity, 
just so far as the relations of the various depart- 
ments are perceived, freedom of election by the 
student must be limited. For it at once appears 
that on the one side there are vast ranges of in- 
formation which have virtually no significance for 
the purposes of a liberal education, while on the 
other hand there are certain elements so funda- 
mental and vital that without any one of them a 
liberal education is impossible. 

I should like to indicate certain parts of human 
knowledge which seem to me so essential that no 
principle of election should ever be allowed to 
drive them out of the course of any college student. 

First, a student should become acquainted with 
the fundamental motives and purposes and beliefs 
which, clearly or unclearly recognized, underlie all 
human experience and bind it together. He must 
perceive the moral strivings, the intellectual en- 
deavors, the aesthetic experiences of his race, and 
closely linked with these, determining and deter- 
mined by them, the beliefs about the world which 
have appeared in our systems of religion. To in- 
vestigate this field, to bring it to such clearness 
of formulation as may be possible, is the task of 
philosophy an essential element in any liberal 
education. Secondly, as in human living, our mo- 
tives, purposes, and beliefs have found expression 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 55 

in institutions, those concerted modes of pro- 
cedure by which we work together, a student 
should be made acquainted with these. He should 
see and appreciate what is intended, what accom- 
plished, and what left undone by such institutions 
as property, the courts, the family, the church, 
the mill. To know these as contributing and fail- 
ing to contribute to human welfare is the work 
of our social or humanistic sciences, into which 
a boy must go on his way through the liberal col- 
lege. Thirdly, in order to understand the motives 
and the institutions of human life one must know 
the conditions which surround it, the stage on 
which the game is played. To give this informa- 
tion is the business of astronomy, geology, phys- 
ics, chemistry, biology and the other descriptive 
sciences. These a boy must know, so far as they 
are significant and relevant to his purpose. 
Fourthly, as all three of these factors, the motives, 
the institutions, the natural processes have sprung 
from the past and have come to be what they are 
by change upon change in the process of time, 
the student of human life must try to learn the 
sequence of events from which the present has 
come. The development of human thought and 
attitude, the development of human institutions, 
the development of the world and of the beings 
about us all these must be known, as throwing 
light upon present problems, present instrumental- 



52 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

may say that though such a man minds his own 
affairs he does not know them, he does not under- 
stand them. Such a man, from the point of view 
of the demands of a liberal education, differs in 
no essential respect from the tradesman who does 
not understand his trade or the professional man 
who merely practices his profession. Just as truly 
as they, he is shut up within a special interest ; 
just as truly as they he is making no intellectual 
attempt to understand his experience in its unity. 
And the pity of it is that more and more the chairs 
in our colleges are occupied by men who have only 
this special interest, this specialized information, 
and it is through them that we attempt to give 
our boys a liberal education, which the teachers 
themselves have not achieved. 

I should not like to be misunderstood in making 
this railing accusation against our teachers and 
our time. If I say that our knowledge is at pres- 
ent a collection of scattered observations about the 
world rather than an understanding of it, fairness 
compels the admission that the failure is due to 
the inherent difficulties of the situation and to the 
novelty of the problems presented. If I cry out 
against the agnosticism of our people it is not as 
one who has escaped from it, nor as one who 
would point the way back to the older synthesis, 
but simply as one who believes that the time has 
come for a reconstruction, for a new synthesis. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 53 

We have had time enough now to get some notion 
of our bearings, shocks enough to get over our 
nervousness and discomfiture when a new one comes 
along. It is the opportunity and the obligation 
of this generation to think through the content of 
our knowing once again, to understand it, so far 
as we can. And in such a battle as this, surely 
it is the part of the college to take the lead. Here 
is the mission of the college teacher as of no other 
member of our common life. Surely he should 
stand before his pupils and before all of us as a 
man who has achieved some understanding of this 
human situation of ours, but more than that, as 
one who is eager for the conflict with the powers 
of darkness and who can lead his pupils in enthusi- 
astic devotion to the common cause of enlighten- 
ment. 



And now, finally, after these attacks upon the 
policies which other men have derived from their 
love of knowledge, may I suggest two matters of 
policy which seem to me to follow from the defini- 
tion of education which we have taken. The first 
concerns the content of the college course ; the 
second has to do with the method of its presenta- 
tion to the undergraduate. 

We have said that the system of free election is 
natural for those to whom knowledge is simply a 



58 ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN 

see every freshman at once plunged into the prob- 
lems of philosophy, into the difficulties and per- 
plexities about our institutions, into the scientific 
accounts of the world especially as they bear on 
human life, into the portrayals of human experi- 
ence which are given by the masters of literature. 
If this were done by proper teaching, it seems to 
me the boy's college course would at once take on 
significance for him ; he would understand what 
he is about ; and though he would be a sadly puz- 
zled boy at the end of the first year, he would still 
have before him three good years of study, of 
investigation, of reflection, and of discipleship, in 
which to achieve, so far as may be, the task to 
which he has been set. Let him once feel the 
problems of the present, and his historical studies 
will become significant ; let him know what other 
men have discovered and thought about his prob- 
lems, and he will be ready to deal with them him- 
self. But in any case, the whole college course 
will be unified and dominated by a single interest, 
a single purpose, that of so understanding hu- 
man life as to be ready and equipped for the prac- 
tice of it. And this would mean for the college, 
not another seeking of the way of quick returns, 
but rather an escape from aimless wanderings in 
the mere by-paths of knowledge, a resolute climb- 
ing on the high road to a unified grasp upon 
human experience. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 59 

I have taken so much of your time this morning 
that an apology seems due for the things I have 
omitted to mention. I have said nothing of the 
organization of the college, nothing of the social 
life of the students, nothing of the relations 
with the alumni, nothing of the needs and quali- 
fications of the teachers, and even within the con- 
sideration of the course of study, nothing of the 
value of specialization or of the disciplinary sub- 
jects or of the training in language and expression. 
And I have put these aside deliberately, for the 
sake of a cause which is greater than any of them 
a cause which lies at the very heart of the lib- 
eral college. It is the cause of making clear to 
the American people the mission of the teacher, of 
convincing them of the value of knowledge : not 
the specialized knowledge which contributes to im- 
mediate practical aims, but the unified understand- 
ing which is Insight. 



KNOWLEDGE VIEWED IN RELA- 
TION TO LEARNING 1 

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

IT were well if the English, like the Greek lan- 
guage, possessed some definite word to express, 
simply and generally, intellectual proficiency or 
perfection, such as " health," as used with refer- 
ence to the animal frame, and " virtue," with refer- 
ence to our moral nature. I am not able to find 
such a term ; talent, ability, genius, belong dis- 
tinctly to the raw material, which is the subject- 
matter, not to that excellence which is the result 
of exercise and training. When we turn, indeed, 
to the particular kinds of intellectual perfection, 
words are forthcoming for our purpose, as, for 
instance, judgment, taste, and skill; yet even these 
belong, for the most part, to powers or habits 
bearing upon practice or upon art, and not to 
any perfect condition of the intellect, considered 
in itself. Wisdom, again, is certainly a more com- 
prehensive word than any other, but it has a direct 

J The sixth of a series of nine Discourses on University Teach- 
ing delivered to the Catholics of Dublin in 1852. 

60 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 61 

relation to conduct, and to human life. Knowl- 
edge, indeed, and Science express purely intellect- 
ual ideas, but still not a state or quality of the 
intellect; for knowledge, in its ordinary sense, is 
but one of its circumstances, denoting a possession 
or a habit; and science has been appropriated to 
the subject-matter of the intellect, instead of be- 
longing in English, as it ought to do, to the intel- 
lect itself. The consequence is that, on an occa- 
sion like this, many words are necessary, in order, 
first, to bring out and convey what surely is no 
difficult idea in itself, that of the cultivation of 
the intellect as an end ; next, in order to recom- 
mend what surely is no unreasonable object ; and 
lastly, to describe and make the mind realize the 
particular perfection in which that object con- 
sists. Every one knows practically what are the 
constituents of health or of virtue ; and every one 
recognizes health and virtue as ends to be pursued ; 
it is otherwise with intellectual excellence, and 
this must be my excuse, if I seem to any one to 
be bestowing a good deal of labor on a preliminary 
matter. 

In default of a recognized term, I have called 
the perfection or virtue of the intellect by the 
name of philosophy, philosophical knowledge, en- 
largement of mind, or illumination; terms which 
are not uncommonly given to it by writers of this 
day: but, whatever name we bestow on it, it is, I 



62 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

believe, as a matter of history, the business of a 
University to make this intellectual culture its 
direct scope, or to employ itself in the education 
of the intellect, just as the work of a Hospital 
lies in healing the sick or wounded, of a Riding or 
Fencing School, or of a Gymnasium, in exercising 
the limbs, of an Almshouse, in aiding and solacing 
the old, of an Orphanage, in protecting innocence, 
of a Penitentiary, in restoring the guilty. I say, 
a University, taken in its bare idea, and before 
we view it as an instrument of the Church, has 
this object and this mission; it contemplates 
neither moral impression nor mechanical produc- 
tion ; it professes to exercise the mind neither in 
art nor in duty; its function is intellectual cul- 
ture ; here it may leave its scholars, and it has 
done its work when it has done as much as this. 
It educates the intellect to reason well in all mat- 
ters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it. 
This, I said in my foregoing Discourse, was the 
object of a University, viewed in itself, and apart 
from the Catholic Church, or from the State, or 
from any other power which may use it ; and I 
illustrated this in various ways. I said that the 
intellect must have an excellence of its own, for 
there was nothing which had not its specific good ; 
that the word " educate " would not be used of 
intellectual culture, as it is used, had not the 
intellect had an end of its own; that, had it not 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 63 

such an end, there would be no meaning in calling 
certain intellectual exercises " liberal," in contrast 
with " useful," as is commonly done ; that the very 
notion of a philosophical temper implied it, for 
it threw us back upon research and system as ends 
in themselves, distinct from effects and works of 
any kind ; that a philosophical scheme of knowl- 
edge, or system of sciences, could not, from the 
nature of the case, issue in any one definite art or 
pursuit, as its end; and that, on the other hand, 
the discovery and contemplation of truth, to which 
research and systematizing led, were surely suf- 
ficient ends, though nothing beyond them were 
added, and that they had ever been accounted suf- 
ficient by mankind. 

Here then I take up the subject; and, having 
determined that the cultivation of the intellect is 
an end distinct and sufficient in itself, and that, 
so far as words go it is an enlargement or illumina- 
tion, I proceed to inquire what this mental breadth, 
or power, or light, or philosophy consists in. A 
Hospital heals a broken limb or cures a fever: 
what does an Institution effect, which professes 
the health, not of the body, not of the soul, but of 
the intellect? What is this good, which in former 
times, as well as our own, has been found worth 
the notice, the appropriation, of the Catholic 
Church? 

I have then to investigate, in the Discourses 



64 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

which follow, those qualities and characteristics of 
the intellect in which its cultivation issues or 
rather consists; and, with a view of assisting my- 
self in this undertaking, I shall recur to certain 
questions which have already been touched upon. 
These questions are three: viz., the relation of 
intellectual culture, first, to mere knowledge ; sec- 
ondly, to professional knowledge ; and thirdly, to 
religious knowledge. In other words, are acquire- 
ments and attainments the scope of a University 
Education? or expertness in particular arts and 
pursuits? or moral and religious proficiency? or 
something besides these three? These questions 
I shall examine in succession, with the purpose I 
have mentioned ; and I hope to be excused, if, in 
this anxious undertaking, I am led to repeat what, 
either in these Discourses or elsewhere, I have 
already put upon paper. And first, of Mere 
Knowledge, or Learning, and its connection with 
intellectual illumination or Philosophy. 

I suppose the prima-facie view which the public 
at large would take of a University, considering 
it as a place of Education, is nothing more or less 
than a place for acquiring a great deal of knowl- 
edge on a great many subjects. Memory is one 
of the first developed of the mental facilities ; a 
boy's business when he goes to school is to learn, 
that is, to store up things in his memory. For 
many years his intellect is little more than an in- 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 65 

strument for taking in facts, or a receptacle for 
storing them ; he welcomes them as fast as they 
come to him ; he lives on what is without ; he has 
his eyes ever about him ; he has a lively suscepti- 
bility of impressions ; he imbibes information of 
every kind; and little does he make his own in a 
true sense of the word, living rather upon his 
neighbors all around him. He has opinions, re- 
ligious, political, and literary, and, for a boy, is 
very positive in them and sure about them ; but he 
gets them from his school-fellows, or his masters, 
or his parents, as the case may be. Such as he is 
in his other relations, such also is he in his school 
exercises ; his mind is observant, sharp, ready, re- 
tentive ; he is almost passive in the acquisition of 
knowledge. I say this in no disparagement of the 
idea of a clever boy. Geography, chronology, his- 
tory, language, natural history, he heaps up the 
matter of these studies as treasures for a future 
day. It is the seven years of plenty with him : he 
gathers in by handfuls, like the Egyptians, with- 
out counting; and though, as time goes on, there 
is exercise for his argumentative powers in the 
Elements of Mathematics, and for his taste in the 
Poets and Orators, still, while at school, or at 
least, till quite the last years of his time, he ac- 
quires, and little more ; and when he is leaving for 
the University he is mainly the creature of foreign 
influences and circumstances, and made up of ac- 



66 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

cidcnts, homogeneous or not, as the case may be. 
Moreover, the moral habits, which are a boy's 
praise, encourage and assist this result ; that is, 
diligence, assiduity, regularity, despatch, per- 
severing application ; for these are the direct con- 
ditions of acquisition, and naturally lead to it. 
Acquirements, again, are emphatically producible, 
and at a moment ; they are a something to show, 
both for master and scholar ; an audience, even 
though ignorant themselves of the subjects of an 
examination, can comprehend when questions are 
answered and when they are not. Here again is 
a reason why mental culture is in the minds of 
men identified with the acquisition of knowledge. 

The same notion possesses the public mind, 
when it passes on from the thought of a school to 
that of a University : and with the best of reasons 
so far as this, that there is no true culture with- 
out requirements, and that philosophy presup- 
poses knowledge. It requires a great deal of read- 
ing, or a wide range of information, to warrant 
us in putting forth our opinions on any serious 
subject; and without such learning the most orig- 
inal mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse, 
to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful 
result or any trustworthy conclusion. There are 
indeed persons who profess a different view of the 
matter, and even act upon it. Every now and then 
you will find a person of vigorous or fertile mind, 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 67 

who relies upon his own resources, despises all 
former authors, and gives the world, with the ut- 
most fearlessness, his views upon religion, or his- 
tory, or any other popular subject. And his 
works may sell for a while ; he may get a name in 
his day ; but this will be all. His readers are sure 
to find on the long run that his doctrines are mere 
theories, and not the expression of facts, that they 
are chaff instead of bread, and then his popular- 
ity drops as suddenly as it rose. 

Knowledge then is the indispensable condition 
of expansion of mind, and the instrument of at- 
taining to it ; this cannot be denied, it is ever to 
be insisted on ; I begin with it as a first principle ; 
however, the very truth of it carries men too far, 
and confirms to them the notion that it is the 
whole of the matter. A narrow mind is thought 
to be that which contains little knowledge ; and 
an enlarged mind, that which holds a great deal; 
and what seems to put the matter beyond dispute 
is, the fact of the great number of studies which 
jare pursued in a University, by its very profes- 
sion. Lectures are given on every kind of sub- 
ject; examinations are held; prizes awarded. 
There are moral, metaphysical, physical Pro- 
fessors ; Professors of languages, of history, of 
mathematics, of experimental science. Lists of 
questions are published, wonderful for their range 
and depth, variety and difficulty; treatises are 



68 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

written, which carry upon their very face the 
evidence of extensive reading or multifarious in- 
formation ; what then is wanting for mental culture 
to a person of large reading and scientific attain- 
ments? what is grasp of mind but acquirement? 
where shall philosophical repose be found, but in 
the consciousness and enjoyment of large intellect- 
ual possessions? 

And yet this notion is, I conceive, a mistake, 
and my present business is to show that it is one, 
and that the end of a Liberal Education is not 
mere knowledge, or knowledge considered in its 
matter; and I shall best attain my object, by actu- 
ally setting down some cases, which will be gen- 
erally granted to be instances of the process of en- 
lightenment or enlargement of mind, and others 
which are not, and thus, by the comparison, you 
will be able to judge for yourselves, Gentlemen, 
whether Knowledge, that is, acquirement, is after 
all the real principle of the enlargement, or 
whether that principle is not rather something 
beyond it. 

For instance, let a person, whose experience has 
hitherto been confined to the more calm and un- 
pretending scenery of these islands, whether here 
or in England, go for the first time into parts 
where physical nature puts on her wilder and more 
awful forms, whether at home or abroad, as into 
mountainous districts ; or let one, who has ever 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 69 

lived in a quiet village, go for the first time to a 
great metropolis, then I suppose he will have a 
sensation which perhaps he never had before. He 
has a feeling not in addition or increase of former 
feelings, but of something different in its nature. 
He will perhaps be borne forward, and find for 
a time that he has lost his bearings. He has made 
a certain progress, and he has a consciousness of 
mental enlargement; he does not stand where he 
did, he has a new centre, and a range of thoughts 
to which he was before a stranger. 

Again, the view of the heavens which the tele- 
scope opens upon us, if allowed to fill and possess 
the mind, may almost whirl it round and make 
it dizzy. It brings in a flood of ideas, and is 
rightly called an intellectual enlargement, what- 
ever is meant by the term. 

And so again, the sight of beasts of prey and 
other foreign animals, their strangeness, the orig- 
inality (if I may use the term) of their forms and 
gestures and habits and their variety and inde- 
pendence of each other, throw us out of ourselves 
into another creation, and as if under another 
Creator, if I may so express the temptation which 
may come on the mind. We seem to have new 
faculties, or a new exercise for our faculties, by 
this addition to our knowledge; like a prisoner, 
who, having been accustomed to wear manacles 
or fetters, suddenly finds his arms and legs free. 



70 

Hence Physical Science generally, in all its de- 
partments, as bringing before us the exuberant 
riches and resources, yet the orderly course, of 
the Universe, elevates and excites the student, and 
at first, I may say, almost takes away his breath, 
while in time it exercises a tranquilizing influence 
upon him. 

Again, the study of history is said to enlarge 
and enlighten the mind, and why? because, as I 
conceive, it gives it a power of judging of passing 
events, and of all events, and a conscious superior- 
ity over them, which before it did not possess. 

And in like manner, what is called seeing the 
world, entering into active life, going into society, 
traveling, gaining acquaintance with the various 
classes of the community, coming into contact 
with the principles and modes of thought of vari- 
ous parties, interests, and races, their views, aims, 
habits, and manners, their religious creeds and 
forms of worship, gaining experience how vari- 
ous yet how alike men are, how low-minded, how 
bad, how opposed, yet how confident in their opin- 
ions ; all this exerts a perceptible influence upon 
the mind, which it is impossible to mistake, be it 
good or be it bad, and is popularly called its en- 
largement. 

And then again, the first time the mind comes 
across the arguments and speculations of unbe- 
lievers, and feels what a novel light they cast upon 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 71 

what it has hitherto accounted sacred ; and still 
more, if it gives in to them and embraces them, 
and throws off as so much prejudice what it has 
hitherto held, and, as if waking from a dream, 
begins to realize to its imagination that there is 
now no such thing as law and the transgression 
of law, that sin is a phantom, and punishment a 
bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to enjoy the 
world and the flesh ; and still further, when it does 
enjoy them, and reflects that it may think and 
hold just what it will, that " the world is all before 
it where to choose," and what system to build up 
as its own private persuasion ; when this torrent 
of wilful thoughts rushes over and inundates it, 
who will deny that the fruit of the tree of knowl- 
edge, or what the mind takes for knowledge, has 
made it one of the gods, with a sense of expansion 
and elevation, an intoxication in reality, still, 
so far as the subjective state of the mind goes, an 
illumination? Hence the fanaticism of individuals 
or nations, who suddenly cast off their Maker. 
Their eyes are opened; and, like the judgment- 
stricken king in the Tragedy, 1 they see two suns, 
and a magic universe, out of which they look back 
upon their former state of faith and innocence 
with a sort of contempt and indignation, as if they 

l The BaccJice of Euripides. Pentheus, King of Thebes, hav- 
ing defied Dionysus, is smitten with madness. 



72 

were then but fools, and the dupes of imposture. 

On the other hand, Religion has its own en- 
largement, and an enlargement, not of tumult, but 
of peace. It is often remarked of uneducated 
persons, who have hitherto thought little of the 
unseen world, that, on their turning to God, look- 
ing into themselves, regulating their hearts, re- 
forming their conduct, and meditating on death 
and judgment, heaven and hell, they seem to be- 
come, in point of intellect, different beings from 
what they were. Before, they took things as they 
came, and thought no more of one thing than 
another. But now every event has a meaning; 
they have their own estimate of whatever happens 
to them ; they are mindful of times and seasons, 
and compare the present with the past; and the 
world, no longer dull, monotonous, unprofitable, 
and hopeless, is a various and complicated 
drama, with parts and an object, and an awful 
moral. 

Now from these instances, to which many more 
might be added, it is plain, first, that the com- 
munication of knowledge certainly is either a con- 
dition or the means of that sense of enlargement 
or enlightenment, of which at this day we hear so 
much in certain quarters : this cannot be denied ; 
but next, it is equally plain, that such communica- 
tion is not the whole of the process. The enlarge- 
ment consists, not merely in the passive reception 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 73 

into the mind of a number of ideas hitherto un- 
known to it, but in the mind's energetic and sim- 
ultaneous action upon and towards and among 
those new ideas, which are rushing in upon it. 
It is the action of a formative power, reducing to 
order and meaning the matter of our acquire- 
ments ; it is a making the objects of our knowledge 
subjectively our own, or, to use a familiar word, 
it is a digestion of what we receive, into the sub- 
stance of our previous state cf thought ; and with- 
out this no enlargement is said to follow. There 
is no enlargement, unless there be a comparison 
of ideas one with another, as they come before the 
mind, and a systematizing of them. We feel our 
minds to be growing and expanding then, when 
we not only learn, but refer what we learn to 
what we know already. It is not the mere addi- 
tion to our knowledge that is the illumination ; but 
the locomotion, the movement onwards, of that 
mental centre, to which both what we know, and 
what we are learning, the accumulating mass of 
our acquirements, gravitates. And therefore a 
truly great intellect, and recognized to be such by 
the common opinion of mankind, such as the in- 
tellect of Aristotle, or of St. Thomas, 1 or of New- 
ton, or of Goethe, (I purposely take instances 

Thomas Aquinas, the famous theologian of the thirteenth 
century. 



74 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

within and without the Catholic pale, when I would 
speak of the intellect as such,) is one which takes 
a connected view of old and new, past and present, 
far and near, and which has an insight into the 
influence of all these one on another ; without which 
there is no whole, and no centre. It possesses the 
knowledge, not only of things, but also of their 
mutual and true relations ; knowledge, not merely 
considered as acquirement, but as philosophy. 

Accordingly, when this analytical, distributive, 
harmonizing process is away, the mind experiences 
no enlargement, and is not reckoned as enlightened 
or comprehensive, whatever it may add to its 
knowledge. For instance, a great memory, as I 
have already said, does not make a philosopher, 
any more than a dictionary can be called a 
grammar. There are men who embrace in their 
minds a vast multitude of ideas, but with little 
sensibility about their real relations towards each 
other. These may be antiquarians, annalists, nat- 
uralists ; they may be learned in the law ; they may 
be versed in statistics ; they are most useful in 
their own place; I should shrink from speaking 
disrespectfully of them; still, there is nothing in 
such attainments to guarantee the absence of nar- 
rowness of mind. If they are nothing more than 
well-read men, or men of information, they have 
not what specially deserves the name of culture 
of mind, or fulfils the type of Liberal Education. 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 75 

In like manner, we sometimes fall in with per- 
sons who have seen much of the world, and of the 
men who, in their day, have played a conspicuous 
part in it, but who generalize nothing, and have 
no observation, in the true sense of the word. 
They abound in information in detail, curious and 
entertaining, about men and things ; and, having 
lived under the influence of no very clear or settled 
principles, religious or political, they speak of 
every one and every thing, only as so many phe- 
nomena, which are complete in themselves, and 
lead to nothing, not discussing them, or teaching 
any truth, or instructing the hearer, but simply 
talking. No one would say that these persons, 
well informed as they are, had attained to any 
great culture of intellect or to philosophy. 

The case is the same still more strikingly where 
the persons in question are beyond dispute men 
of inferior powers and deficient education. Per- 
haps they have been much in foreign countries, and 
they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, 
the various facts which are forced upon them there. 
Seafaring men, for example, range from one end 
of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of 
external objects, which they have encountered, 
forms no symmetrical and consistent picture upon 
their imagination ; they see the tapestry of human 
life, as it were on the wrong side, and it tells no 
story. They sleep, and they rise up, and they find 



76 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see 
visions of great cities and wild regions; they are 
in the marts of commerce, or amid the islands of 
the South; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, 1 or on 
the Andes ; and nothing which meets them carries 
them forward or backward, to any idea beyond 
itself. Nothing has a drift or relation ; nothing 
has a history or a promise. Every thing stands 
by itself, and comes and goes in its turn, like the 
shifting scenes of a show, which leave the spectator 
where he was. Perhaps you are near such a man 
on a particular occasion, and expect him to be 
shocked or perplexed at something which occurs ; 
but one thing is much the same to him as another, 
or, if he is perplexed, it is as not knowing what 
to say, whether it is right to admire, or to ridicule, 
or to disapprove, while conscious that some ex- 
pression of opinion is expected from him ; for in 
fact he has no standard of judgment at all, and 
no landmarks to guide him to a conclusion. Such 
is mere acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would 
dream of calling it philosophy. 

Instances, such as these, confirm, by the con- 
trast, the conclusion I have already drawn from 
those which preceded them. That only is true 
enlargement of mind which is the power of view- 
ing many things at once as one whole, of referring 

1 A Corinthian column near Alexandria. 



them severally to their true place in the universal 
system, of understanding their respective values, 
and determining their mutual dependence. Thus 
is that form of Universal Knowledge, of which I 
have on a former occasion spoken, set up in the 
individual intellect, and constitutes its perfection. 
Possessed of this real illumination, the mind never 
views any part of the extended subject-matter of 
Knowledge without recollecting that it is but a 
part, or without the associations which spring 
from this recollection. It makes every thing in 
some sort lead to every thing else; it would com- 
municate the image of the whole to every separate 
portion, till that whole becomes in imagination like 
a spirit, every where pervading and penetrating 
its component parts, and giving them one definite 
meaning. Just as our bodily organs, when men- 
tioned, recall their function in the body, as the 
word " creation " suggests the Creator, and " sub- 
jects " a sovereign, so, in the mind of the Philos- 
opher, as we are abstractly conceiving of him, the 
elements of the physical and moral world, sciences, 
arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events, opinions, in- 
dividualities, are all viewed as one, with correlative 
functions, and as gradually by successive com- 
binations converging, one and all, to the true 
centre. 

To have even a portion of this illuminative rea- 
son and true philosophy is the highest state to 



78 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

which nature can aspire, in the way of intellect ; it 
puts the mind above the influences of chance and 
necessity, above anxiety, suspense, unsettlement, 
and superstition, winch is the lot of the many. 
Men, whose minds are possessed with some one ob- 
ject, take exaggerated views of its importance, are 
feverish in the pursuit of it, make it the measure 
of things which are utterly foreign to it, and are 
startled and despond if it happens to fail them. 
They are ever in alarm or in transport. Those 
on the other hand who have no object or principle 
whatever to hold by, lose their way, every step 
they take. They are thrown out, and do not know 
what to think or say, at every fresh juncture; 
the}' have no view of persons, or occurrences, or 
facts, which come suddenly upon them, and they 
hang upon the opinion of others, for want of 
internal resources. But the intellect, which has 
been disciplined to the perfection of its powers, 
which knows, and thinks while it knows, which has 
learned to leaven the dense mass of facts and events 
with the elastic force of reason, such an intellect 
cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be 
impetuous, cannot be at a loss, cannot but be pa- 
tient, collected, and majestically calm, because it 
discerns the end in every beginning, the origin 
in every end, the law in every interruption, the 
limit in each delay; because it ever knows where 
it stands, and how its path lies from one point to 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 79 

another. It is ihererpayajyo? 1 of the Peripatetic, 
and as the " nil admirari " 2 of the Stoic, 

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum 
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. 3 

There are men who, when in difficulties, originate 
at the moment vast ideas or dazzling projects; 
who, under the influence of excitement, are able 
to cast a light, almost as if from inspiration, on 
a subject or course of action which conies before 
them ; who have a sudden presence of mind equal 
to any emergency, rising with the occasion, and 
an undaunted magnanimous bearing, and an 
energy and keenness which is but made intense by 
opposition. This is genius, this is heroism ; it is 
the exhibition of a natural gift, which no culture 
can teach, at which no Institution can aim ; here, 
on the contrary, we are concerned, not with mere 
nature, but with training and teaching. That 
perfection of the Intellect, which is the result of 
Education, and its beau ideal, to be imparted to 
individuals in their respective measures, is the 
clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of 
all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace 

1 Four-square. 

2 To be moved by nothing. 

3 Happy is he who has come to know the sequences of 
things, and is thus above all fear, and the dread march of fate, 
and the roar of greedy Acheron. 



80 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

them, each in its place, and with its own character- 
istics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its 
knowledge of history ; it is almost heart-searching 
from its knowledge of human nature ; it has al- 
most supernatural charity from its freedom from 
littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose 
of faith, because nothing can startle it ; it has 
almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly con- 
templation, so intimate is it with the eternal order 
of things and the music of the spheres. 

And now, if I may take for granted that the 
true and adequate end of intellectual training and 
of a University is not Learning or Acquirement, 
but rather, is Thought or Reason exercised upon 
Knowledge, or what may be called Philosophy, I 
shall be in a position to explain the various mis- 
takes which at the present day beset the subject 
of University Education. 

I say then, if we would improve the intellect, 
first of all, we must ascend ; we cannot gain real 
knowledge on a level ; we must generalize, we must 
reduce to method, we must have a grasp of princi- 
ples, and group and shape our acquisitions by 
means of them. It matters not whether our field 
of operation be wide or limited ; in every case, to 
command it, is to mount above it. Who has not 
felt the irritation of mind and impatience created 
by a deep, rich country, visited for the first time, 
with winding lanes, and high hedges, and green 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 81 

steeps, and tangled woods, and every thing smiling 
indeed, but in a maze? The same feeling comes 
upon us in a strange city, when we have no map 
of its streets. Hence you hear of practised trav- 
elers, when they first come into a place, mounting 
some high hill or church tower, by way of recon- 
noitring its neighborhood. In like manner, you 
must be above your knowledge, not under it, or 
it will oppress you ; and the more you have of it, 
the greater will be the load. The learning of a 
Salmasius or a Burman, 1 unless you are its master, 
will be your tyrant. " Imperat aut servit ; " 2 if 
you can wield it with a strong arm, it is a great 
weapon ; otherwise, 

Vis consili expers 
Mole ruit sua. 3 

You will be overwhelmed, like Tarpeia, by the 
heavy wealth which you have exacted from trib- 
utary generations. 

Instances abound ; there are authors who are as 
pointless as they are inexhaustible in their literary 
resources. They measure knowledge by bulk, as 
it lies in the rude block, without symmetry, with- 
out design. How many commentators are there 

Salmasius (1588-1653), Dutch scholar; Burman (1668- 
1741), Dutch theologian. 

2 It rules or it serves. 

3 Brute force without intelligence falls of its own weight. 



82 

on the Classics, how many on Holy Scripture, 
from whom we rise up, wondering at the learning 
which has passed before us, and wondering why 
it passed ! How many writers are there of Ec- 
clesiastical History, such as Mosheim or Du Pin, 
who, breaking up their subject into details, de- 
stroy its life, and defraud us of the whole by their 
anxiety about the parts ! The Sermons, again, of 
the English Divines in the seventeenth century, 
how often are they mere repertories of miscellane- 
ous and officious learning! Of course Catholics 
also may read without thinking; and in their case, 
equally as with Protestants, it holds good, that 
such knowledge is unworthy of the name, knowl- 
edge which they have not thought through, and 
thought out. Such readers are only possessed by 
their knowledge, not possessed of it ; nay, in matter 
of fact they are often even carried away by it, 
without any volition of their own. Recollect, the 
Memory can tyrannize, as well as the Imagination. 
Derangement, I believe, has been considered as a 
loss of control over the sequence of ideas. The 
mind, once set in motion, is henceforth deprived 
of the power of initiation, and becomes the victim 
of a train of associations, one thought suggesting 
another, in the way of cause and effect, as if by 
a mechanical process, or some physical necessity. 
No one, who has had experience of men of studious 
habits, but must recognize the existence of a 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 83 

parallel phenomenon in the case of those who have 
over-stimulated the Memory. In such persons 
Reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as 
in the madman ; once fairly started on any sub- 
ject whatever, they have no power of self-control ; 
they passively endure the succession of impulses 
which are evolved out of the original exciting 
cause ; they are passed on from one idea to another 
and go steadily forward, plodding along one line 
of thought in spite of the amplest concessions of 
the hearer, or wandering from it in endless digres- 
sion in spite of his remonstrances. Now, if, as 
is very certain, no one would envy the madman 
the glow and originality of his conceptions, why 
must we extol the cultivation of that intellect, 
which is the prey, not indeed of barren fancies 
but of barren facts, of random intrusions from 
without, though not of morbid imaginations from 
within? And in thus speaking, I am not denying 
that a strong and ready memory is in itself a real 
treasure; I am not disparaging a well-stored mind, 
though it be nothing besides, provided it be sober, 
any more than I would despise a bookseller's 
shop: it is of great value to others, even when 
not so to the owner. Nor am I banishing, far 
from it, the possessors of deep and multifarious 
learning from my ideal University; they adorn it 
in the eyes of men ; I do but say that they con- 
stitute no type of the results at which it aims ; 



84 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

that it is no great gain to the intellect to have 
enlarged the memory at the expense of faculties 
which are indisputably higher. 

Nor indeed am I supposing that there is any 
great danger, at least in this day, of over-educa- 
tion; the danger is on the other side. I will tell 
you, Gentlemen, what has been the practical error 
of the last twenty years, not to load the memory 
of the student with a mass of undigested knowl- 
edge, but to force upon him so much that he has 
rejected all. It has been the error of distracting 
and enfeebling the mind by an unmeaning pro- 
fusion of subjects; of implying that a smattering 
in a dozen branches of study is not shallowness, 
which it really is, but enlargement, which it is 
not; of considering an acquaintance with the 
learned names of things and persons, and the pos- 
session of clever duodecimos, and attendance on 
eloquent lecturers, and membership with scientific 
institutions, and the sight of the experiments of 
a platform and the specimens of a museum, that 
all this was not dissipation of mind, but progress. 
All things now are to be learned at once, not first 
one thing, then another, not one well, but many 
badly. Learning is to be without exertion, with- 
out attention, without toil ; without grounding, 
without advance, without finishing. There is to be 
nothing individual in it ; and this, forsooth, is the 
wonder of the age. What the steam engine does 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 85 

with matter, the printing press is to do with mind ; 
it is to act mechanically, and the population is 
to be passively, almost unconsciously enlightened, 
by the mere multiplication and dissemination of 
volumes. Whether it be the school boy, or the 
school girl, or the youth at college, or the mechanic 
in the town, or the politician in the senate, all 
have been the victims in one way or other of this 
most preposterous and pernicious of delusions. 
Wise men have lifted up their voices in vain ; and 
at length, lest their own institutions should be 
outshone and should disappear in the folly of the 
hour, they have been obliged, as far as they could 
with a good conscience, to humor a spirit which 
they could not withstand, and make temporizing 
concessions at which they could not but inwardly 
smile. 

It must not be supposed that, because I so 
speak, therefore I have some sort of fear of the 
education of the people : on the contrary, the 
more education they have, the better, so that it is 
really education. Nor am I an enemy to the cheap 
publication of scientific and literary works, which 
is now in vogue : on the contrary, I consider it a 
great advantage, convenience, and gain ; that is, 
to those to whom education has given a capacity 
for using them. Further, I consider such innocent 
recreations as science and literature are able to 
furnish will be a very fit occupation of the 



86 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

thoughts and the leisure of young persons, and 
may be made the means of keeping them from bad 
employments and bad companions. Moreover, as 
to that superficial acquaintance with chemistry, 
and geology, and astronomy, and political econ- 
omy, and modern history, and biography, and 
other branches of knowledge, which periodical lit- 
erature and occasional lectures and scientific in- 
stitutions diffuse through the community, I think 
it a graceful accomplishment, and a suitable, nay, 
in this day a necessary accomplishment, in the 
case of educated men. Nor, lastly, am I disparag- 
ing or discouraging the thorough acquisition of 
any one of these studies, or denying that, as far 
as it goes, such thorough acquisition is a real edu- 
cation of the mind. All I say is, call things by 
their right names, and do not confuse together 
ideas which are essentially different. A thorough 
knowledge of one science and a superficial ac- 
quaintance with many, are not the same thing; 
a smattering of a hundred things or a memory for 
detail, is not a philosophical or comprehensive 
view. Recreations are not education ; accomplish- 
ments are not education. Do not say, the people 
must be educated, when, after all, you only mean, 
amused, refreshed, soothed, put into good spirits 
and good humor, or kept from vicious excesses. I 
do not say that such amusements, such occupa- 
tions of mind, are not a great gain ; but 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 87 

they are not education. You may as well call 
drawing and fencing education, as a gen- 
eral knowledge of botany or conchology. Stuff- 
ing birds or playing string instruments is an ele- 
gant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is 
not education ; it does not form or cultivate the 
intellect. Education is a high word; it is the 
preparation for knowledge, and it is the imparting 
of knowledge in proportion to that preparation. 
We require intellectual eyes to know withal, as 
bodily eyes for sight. We need both objects and 
organs intellectual ; we cannot gain them without 
setting about it ; we cannot gain them in our sleep, 
or by haphazard. The best telescope does not 
dispense with eyes ; the printing press or the lec- 
ture room will assist us greatly, but we must be 
true to ourselves, we must be parties in the work. 
A University is, according to the usual designa- 
tion, an Alma Mater, knowing her children one 
by one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill. 

I protest to you, Gentlemen, that if I had to 
choose between a so-called University, which dis- 
pensed with residence and tutorial superintend- 
ence, and gave its degrees to any person who 
passed an examination in a wide range of sub- 
jects, and a University which had no professors 
or examinations at all, but merely brought a num- 
ber of young men together for three or four years, 
and then sent them away as the University of 



88 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

Oxford is said to have done some sixty years since, 
if I were asked which of these two methods was 
the better discipline of the intellect, mind, I do 
not say which is morally the better, for it is plain 
that compulsory study must be a good and idle- 
ness an intolerable mischief, but if I must deter- 
mine which of the two courses was the more suc- 
cessful in training, moulding, enlarging the mind, 
which sent out men the more fitted for their secular 
duties, which produced better public men, men of 
the world, men whose names would descend to pos- 
terity, I have no hesitation in giving the prefer- 
ence to that University which did nothing, over 
that which exacted of its members an acquaint- 
ance with every science under the sun. And, 
paradox as this may seem, still if results be the 
test of systems, the influence of the public schools 
and colleges of England, in the course of the last 
century, at least will bear out one side of the con- 
trast as I have drawn it. What would come, on 
the other hand, of the ideal systems of education 
which have fascinated the imagination of this age, 
could they ever take effect, and whether they would 
not produce a generation frivolous, narrow- 
minded and resourceless, intellectually considered, 
is a fair subject for debate; but so far is certain, 
that the Universities and scholastic establishments, 
to which I refer, and which did little more than 
bring together first boys and then youths in large 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 89 

numbers, these institutions, with miserable de- 
formities on the side of morals, with a hollow pro- 
fession of Christianity, and a heathen code of 
ethics, I say, at least they can boast of a suc- 
cession of heroes and statesmen, of literary men 
and philosophers, of men conspicuous for great 
natural virtues, for habits of business, for knowl- 
edge of life, for practical judgment, for cultivated 
tastes, for accomplishments, who have made Eng- 
land what it is, able to subdue the earth, able 
to domineer over Catholics. 

How is this to be explained? I suppose as fol- 
lows : When a multitude of young men, keen, open- 
hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young 
men are, come together and freely mix with each 
other, they are sure to learn one from another, 
even if there be no one to teach them; the con- 
versation of all is a series of lectures to each, and 
they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh 
matter of thought, and distinct principles for 
judging and acting, day by day. An infant has 
to learn the meaning of the information which its 
senses convey to it, and this seems to be its em- 
ployment. It fancies all that the eye presents to 
it to be close to it, till it actually learns the con- 
trary, and thus by practice does it ascertain the 
relations and uses of those first elements of knowl- 
edge which are necessary for its animal existence. 
A parallel teaching is necessary for our social 



90 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

being, and it is secured by a large school or a col- 
lege ; and this effect may be fairly called in its own 
department an enlargement of mind. It is seeing 
the world on a small field with little trouble; for 
the pupils or students come from very different 
places, and with widely different notions, and there 
is much to generalize, much to adjust, much to 
eliminate, there are inter-relations to be defined, 
and conventional rules to be established, in the 
process, by which the whole assemblage is moulded 
together, and gains one tone and one character. 

Let it be clearly understood, I repeat it, that 
I am not taking into account moral or religious 
considerations ; I am but saying that that youthful 
community will constitute a whole, it will embody a 
specific idea, it will represent a doctrine, it will 
administer a code of conduct, and it will furnish 
principles of thought and action. It will give 
birth to a living teaching, which in course of time 
will take the shape of a self-perpetuating tradi- 
tion, or a genius loci, as it is sometimes called ; 
which haunts the home where it has been born, 
and which imbues and forms, more or less, and 
one by one, every individual who is successively 
brought under its shadow. Thus it is that, inde- 
pendent of direct instruction on the part of Su- 
periors, there is a sort of self-education in the 
academic institutions of Protestant England; a 
characteristic tone of thought, a recognized stand- 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 91 

ard of judgment is found in them, which, as devel- 
oped in the individual who is submitted to it, be- 
comes a twofold source of strength to him, both 
from the distinct stamp it impresses on his mind, 
and from the bond of union which it creates be- 
tween him and others, effects which are shared 
by the authorities of the place, for they themselves 
have been educated in it, and at all times are ex- 
posed to the influence of its ethical atmosphere. 
Here then is a real teaching, whatever be its stand- 
ards and principles, true, or false ; and it at least 
tends towards cultivation of the intellect, it at 
least recognizes that knowledge is something more 
than a sort of passive reception of scraps and de- 
tails ; it is a something, and it does a something, 
which never will issue from the most strenuous 
efforts of a set of teachers, with no mutual sym- 
pathies and no inter-communion, of a set of ex- 
aminers with no opinions which they dare profess, 
and with no common principles, who are teaching 
or questioning a set of youths who do not know 
them, and do not know each other, on a large num- 
ber of subjects, different in kind, and connected 
by no wide philosophy, three times a week, or 
three times a year, or once in three years, in chill 
lecture-rooms or on a pompous anniversary. 

Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most 
restricted sense, is preferable to a system of teach- 
ing which, professing so much, really does so little 



92 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

for the mind. Shut your College gates against 
the votary of knowledge, throw him back upon the 
searchings and the efforts of his own mind; he 
will gain by being spared an entrance into your 
Babel. Few indeed there are who can dispense 
with the stimulus and support of instructors, or 
will do any thing at all, if left to themselves. And 
fewer still (though such great minds are to be 
found), who will not, from such unassisted at- 
tempts, contract a self-reliance and a self-esteem, 
which are not only moral evils, but serious hin- 
drances to the attainment of truth. And next to 
none, perhaps, or none, who will not be reminded 
from time to time of the disadvantage under which 
they lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the 
breaks, deficiencies, and irregularities of their 
knowledge, by the eccentricity of opinion and the 
confusion of principle which they exhibit. They 
will be too often ignorant of what every one 
knows and takes for granted, of that multitude 
of small truths which fall upon the mind like dust, 
impalpable and ever accumulating ; they may be un- 
able to converse, they may argue perversely, they 
may pride themselves on their worst paradoxes 
or their grossest truisms, they may be full of their 
own mode of viewing things, unwilling to be put 
out of their way, slow to enter into the minds of 
others ; but, with these and whatever other lia- 
bilities upon their heads, they are likely to have 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 93 

more thought, more mind, more philosophy, more 
true enlargement, than those earnest but ill-used 
persons, who are forced to load their minds with 
a score of subjects against an examination, who 
have too much on their hands to indulge them- 
selves in thinking or investigation, who devour 
premiss and conclusion together with indiscrim- 
inate greediness, who hold whole sciences on faith, 
and commit demonstrations to memory, and who 
too often, as might be expected, when their period 
of education is passed, throw up all they have 
learned in disgust, having gained nothing really 
by their anxious labors, except perhaps the habit 
of application. 

Yet such is the better specimen of the fruit of 
that ambitious system which has of late years 
been making way among us : for its result on 
ordinary minds, and on the common run of 
students, is less satisfactory still; they leave their 
place of education simply dissipated and relaxed 
by the multiplicity of subjects, which they have 
never really mastered, and so shallow as not even 
to know their shallowness. How much better, I 
say, is it for the active and thoughtful intellect, 
where such is to be found, to eschew the College 
and the University altogether, than to submit 
to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumeli- 
ous ! How much more profitable for the inde- 
pendent mind, after the mere rudiments of educa- 



94 

tion, to range through a library at random, taking 
down books as they meet him, and pursuing the 
trains of thought which his mother wit suggests ! 
How much healthier to wander into the fields, and 
there with the exiled Prince * to find " tongues 
in the trees, books in the running brooks ! " How 
much more genuine an education is that of the 
poor boy in the Poem 2 a Poem, whether in con- 
ception or in execution, one of the most touching 
in our language who, not in the wide world, but 
ranging day by day around his widowed mother's 
home, " a dexterous gleaner " in a narrow field, 
and with only such slender outfit 

as the village school and books a few 
Supplied, 

contrived from the beach, and the quay, and the 
fisher's boat, and the inn's fireside, and the trades- 
man's shop, and the shepherd's walk, and the 
smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor, and the 

1 Duke Ferdinand in As You Like It. 

2 Crabbe's Tales of the Hall. This Poem, let me say, I 
read on its first publication, above thirty years ago, with ex- 
treme delight, and have never lost my love of it ; and on 
taking it up lately, found I was even more touched by it than 
heretofore. A work which can please in youth and age, seems 
to fulfil (in logical language) the accidental definition of a 
Classic. (A further course of twenty years has past, and I 
bear the same witness in favor of this Poem.) [Author's 
note.] 



KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING 95 

screaming gulls, and the restless waves, to fashion 
for himself a philosophy and a poetry of his own ! 

But in a large subject, I am exceeding my neces- 
sary limits. Gentlemen, I must conclude abruptly ; 
and postpone any summing up of my argument, 
should that be necessary, to another day. 



KNOWLEDGE VIEWED IN RELA- 
TION TO PROFESSIONAL 
SKILL x 

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

I HAVE been insisting, in my two preceding Dis- 
courses, first, on the cultivation of the intellect, 
as an end which may reasonably be pursued for 
its own sake ; and next, on the nature of that 
cultivation, or what that cultivation consists in. 
Truth of whatever kind is the proper object of 
the intellect ; its cultivation then lies in fitting it 
to apprehend and contemplate truth. Now the 
intellect in its present state, with exceptions which 
need not here be specified, does not discern truth 
intuitively, or as a whole. We know, not by a 
direct and simple vision, not at a glance, but, as it 
were, by piecemeal and accumulation, by a mental 
process, by going round an object, by the com- 
parison, the combination, the mutual correction, 
the continual adaptation, of many partial notions, 
by the employment, concentration, and joint 

'The seventh of a series of nine Discourses on University 
Teaching delivered to the Catholics of Dublin in 1852. 

96 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 97 

action of many faculties and exercises of mind. 
Such a union and concert of the intellectual 
powers, such an enlargement and development, 
such a comprehensiveness, is necessarily a matter 
of training. And again, such a training is a 
matter of rule; it is not mere application, how- 
ever exemplary, which introduces the mind to 
truth, nor the reading many books, nor the get- 
ting up many subjects, nor the witnessing many 
experiments, nor the attending many lectures. All 
this is short of enough ; a man may have done it all, 
yet be lingering in the vestibule of knowledge : he 
may not realize what his mouth utters ; he may 
not see with his mental eye what confronts him ; 
he may have no grasp of things as they are; or 
at least he may have no power at all of advancing 
one step forward of himself, in consequence of 
what he has already acquired, no power of dis- 
criminating between truth and falsehood, of sift- 
ing out the grains of truth from the mass, of ar- 
ranging things according to their real value, and, 
if I may use the phrase, of building up ideas. 
Such a power is the result of a scientific formation 
of mind; it is an acquired faculty of judgment, 
of clear-sightedness, of sagacity, of wisdom, of 
philosophical reach of mind, and of intellectual 
self-possession and repose, qualities which do not 
come of mere acquirement. The bodily eye, the 
organ for apprehending material objects, is pro- 



98 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

vided by nature ; the eye of the mind, of which the 
object is truth, is the work of discipline and habit. 

This process of training, by which the intellect, 
instead of being formed or sacrificed to some par- 
ticular or accidental purpose, some specific trade 
or profession, or study or science, is disciplined 
for its own sake, for the perception of its own 
proper object, and for its own highest culture, is 
called Liberal Education; and though there is no 
one in whom it is carried as far as is conceivable, 
or whose intellect would be a pattern of what 
intellects should be made, yet there is scarcely any 
one but may gain an idea of what real training is, 
and at least look towards it, and make its true 
scope and result, not something else, his standard 
of excellence ; and numbers there are who may sub- 
mit themselves to it, and secure it to themselves 
in good measure. And to set forth the right 
standard, and to train according to it, and to help 
forward all students towards it according to their 
various capacities, this I conceive to be the busi- 
ness of a University. 

Now this is what some great men are very slow 
to allow; they insist that Education should be 
confined to some particular and narrow end, and 
should issue in some definite work, which can be 
weighed and measured. They argue as if every 
thing, as well as every person, had its price; and 
that where there has been a great outlay they have 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 99 

a right to expect a return in kind. This they call 
making Education and Instruction " useful," and 
" Utility " becomes their watchword. With a 
fundamental principle of this nature, they very 
naturally go on to ask, what there is to show for 
the expense of a University ; what is the real worth 
in the market of the article called " a Liberal 
Education," on the supposition that it does not 
teach us definitely how to advance our manufac- 
tures, or to improve our lands, or to better our 
civil economy ; or again, if it does not at once 
make this man a lawyer, that an engineer, and that 
a surgeon ; or at least if it does not lead to discov- 
eries in chemistry, astronomy, geology, magnet- 
ism, and science of every kind. 

This question, as might have been expected, 
has been keenly debated in the present age, and 
formed one main subject of the controversy, to 
which I referred in the Introduction to the present 
Discourses, as having been sustained in the first 
decade of this century by a celebrated Northern 
Review 1 on the one hand, and defenders of the 
University of Oxford on the other. Hardly had 
the authorities of that ancient seat of learning, 
waking from their long neglect, set on foot a plan 
for the education of the youth committed to them, 
than the representatives of science and literature 
in the city, which has sometimes been called the 
1 The Edinburgh Review. 



100 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

Northern Athens, remonstrated, with their gravest 
arguments and their most brilliant satire, against 
the direction and shape which the reform was tak- 
ing. Nothing would content them, but that the 
University should be set to rights on the basis of 
the philosophy of Utility; a philosophy, as they 
seem to have thought, which needed but to be pro- 
claimed in order to be embraced. In truth, they 
were little aware of the depth and force of the 
principles on which the academical authorities 
were proceeding, and, this being so, it was not to 
be expected that they would be allowed to walk at 
leisure over the field of controversy which they 
had selected. Accordingly they were encountered 
in behalf of the University by two men of great 
name and influence in their day, of very different 
minds, but united, as by Collegiate ties, so in the 
clear-sighted and large view which they took of 
the whole subject of Liberal Education ; and the 
defence thus provided for the Oxford studies has 
kept its ground to this day. 

Let me be allowed to devote a few words to the 
memory of distinguished persons, under the 
shadow of whose name I once lived, and by whose 
doctrine I am now profiting. In the heart of Ox- 
ford there is a small plot of ground, hemmed in 
by public thoroughfares, which has been the pos- 
session and the home of one Society for above five 
hundred years. In the old time of Boniface the 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 101 

Eighth and John the Twenty-second, in the age 
of Scotus and Occam and Dante, before Wiclif 
or Huss had kindled those miserable fires which 
are still raging to the ruin of the highest interest 
of man, an unfortunate King of England, Edward 
the Second, flying from the field of Bannockburn, 
is said to have made a vow to the Blessed Virgin 
to found a religious house in her honor, if he got 
back in safety. Prompted and aided by his Al- 
moner, he decided on placing this house in the 
city of Alfred ; and the Image of our Lady, which 
is opposite its entrance-gate, is to this day the 
token of the vow and its fulfilment. King and 
Almoner have long been in the dust, and strangers 
have entered into their inheritance, and their 
creed has been forgotten, and their holy rites dis- 
owned; but day by day a memento is still made 
in the holy Sacrifice by at least one Catholic 
Priest, once a member of that College, for the souls 
of those Catholic benefactors who fed him there 
for so many years. The visitor, whose curiosity 
has been excited by its present fame, gazes per- 
haps with something of disappointment on a col- 
lection of buildings which have with them so few 
of the circumstances of dignity or wealth. Broad 
quadrangles, high halls and chambers, ornamented 
cloisters, stately walks, or umbrageous gardens, 
a throng of students, ample revenues, or a glori- 
ous history, none of these things were the portion 



LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 



102 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

of that old Catholic foundation ; nothing in short 
which to the common eye sixty years ago would 
have given tokens of what it was to be. But it 
had at that time a spirit working within it, which 
enabled its inmates to do, amid its seeming insig- 
nificance, what no other body in the place could 
equal ; not a very abstruse gift or extraordinary 
boast, but a rare one, the honest purpose to ad- 
minister the trust committed to them in such a 
way as their conscience pointed out as best. So, 
whereas the Colleges of Oxford are self-electing 
bodies, the fellows in each perpetually filling up 
for themselves the vacancies which occur in their 
number, the members of this foundation deter- 
mined, at a time when, either from evil custom 
or from ancient statute, such a thing was not 
known elsewhere, to throw open their fellowships 
to the competition of all comers, and, in the choice 
of associates henceforth, to cast to the winds 
every personal motive and feeling, family connec- 
tion, and friendship, and patronage, and political 
interest, and local claim, and prejudice, and party 
jealousy, and to elect solely on public and patri- 
otic grounds. Nay, with a remarkable independ- 
ence of mind, they resolved that even the table of 
honors, awarded to literary merit by the Uni- 
versity in its new system of examination for de- 
grees, should not fetter their judgment as 
electors ; but that at all risks, and whatever criti- 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 103 

cism it might cause, and whatever odium they 
might incur, they would select the men, whoever 
they were, to be children of their Founder, whom 
they thought in their consciences to be most likely 
from their intellectual and moral qualities to please 
him, if (as they expressed it) he were still upon 
earth, most likely to do honor to his College, 
most likely to promote the objects which they 
believed he had at heart. Such persons did not 
promise to be the disciples of a low Utilitarian- 
ism; and consequently, as their collegiate reform 
synchronized with that reform of the Academic 
body, in which they bore a principal part, it was 
not unnatural that, when the storm broke upon 
the University from the North, their Alma Mater, 
whom they loved, should have found her first de- 
fenders within the walls of that small College, 
which had first put itself into a condition to be 
her champion. 

These defenders, I have said, were two, of whom 
the most distinguished was the late Dr. Copleston, 
then a Fellow of the College, successively its 
Provost, and Protestant Bishop of Llandaff. In 
that Society, which owes so much to him, his name 
lives, and ever will live, for the distinction which 
his talents bestowed on it, for the academical im- 
portance to which he raised it, for the generosity 
of spirit, the liberality of sentiment, and the kind- 
ness of heart, with which he adorned it, and which 



104 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

even those who had least sympathy with some as- 
pects of his mind and character could not but 
admire and love. Men come to their meridian at 
various periods of their lives ; the last years of 
the eminent person I am speaking of were given 
to duties which, I am told, have been the means 
of endearing him to numbers, but which afforded 
no scope for that peculiar vigor and keenness of 
mind which enabled him, when a young man, single- 
handed, with easy gallantry, to encounter and 
overthrow the charge of three giants of the North 
combined against him. I believe I am right in 
saying that, in the progress of the controversy, 
the most scientific, the most critical, and the most 
witty, of that literary company, all of them now, 
as he himself, removed from this visible scene, Pro- 
fessor Playfair, Lord Jeffrey, and the Rev. Syd- 
ney Smith, threw together their several efforts into 
one article of their Review, in order to crush and 
pound to dust the audacious controvertist who had 
come out against them in defence of his own In- 
stitutions. To have even contended with such men 
was a sufficient voucher for his ability, even before 
we open his pamphlets, and have actual evidence 
of the good sense, the spirit, the scholar-like 
taste, and the purity of style, by which they are 
distinguished. 

He was supported in the controversy, on the 
same general principles, but with more of method 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 105 

and distinctness, and, I will add, with greater 
force and beauty and perfection, both of thought 
and of language, by the other distinguished 
writer, to whom I have already referred, Mr. 
Davison ; who, though not so well known to the 
world in his day, has left more behind him than 
the Provost of Oriel, to make his name remem- 
bered by posterity. This thoughtful man, who 
was the admired and intimate friend of a very 
remarkable person, whom, whether he wish it or 
not, numbers revere and love as the first author 
of the subsequent movement in the Protestant 
Church towards Catholicism, 1 this grave and philo- 
sophical writer, whose works I can never look into 
without sighing that such a man was lost to the 
Catholic Church, as Dr. Butler before him, by 
some early bias or some fault of self-education 
he, in a review of a work by Mr. Edgeworth on 
Professional Education, which attracted a good 
deal of attention in its day, goes leisurely over 
the same ground, which had already been rapidly 
traversed by Dr. Copleston, and, though pro- 
fessedly employed upon Mr. Edgeworth, is really 
replying to the northern critic who had brought 
that writer's work into notice, and to a far greater 

J Mr. Keble, Vicar of Hursley, late Fellow of Oriel, and Pro- 
fessor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. [Author's 
note. 1 



106 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

author than either of them, who in a past age had 
argued on the same side. 

The author to whom I allude is no other than 
Locke. That celebrated philosopher has preceded 
the Edinburgh Reviewers in condemning the ordi- 
nary subjects in which boys are instructed at 
school, on the ground that they are not needed by 
them in after life ; and before quoting what his 
disciples have said in the present century, I will 
refer to a few passages of the master. " 'Tis 
matter of astonishment," he says in his work on 
Education, " that men of quality and parts should 
suffer themselves to be so far misled by custom 
and implicit faith. Reason, if consulted with, 
would advise, that their children's time should be 
spent in acquiring what might be useful to them, 
when they come to be men, rather than that their 
heads should be stuffed with a deal of trash, a 
great part whereof they usually never do ('tis 
certain they never need to) think on again as long 
as they live ; and so much of it as does stick by 
them they are only the worse for." 

And so again, speaking of verse-making, he 
says, " I know not what reason a father can have 
to wish his son a poet, who does not desire him 
to bid defiance to all other callings and business; 
which is not yet the worst of the case ; for, if he 
proves a successful rhymer and gets once the repu- 
tation of a wit, I desire it to be considered, what 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 107 

company and places he is likely to spend his time 
in, nay, and estate too ; for it is very seldom seen 
that any one discovers mines of gold or silver in 
Parnassus. 'Tis a pleasant air, but a barren 
soil." 

In another passage he distinctly limits utility in 
education to its bearing on the future profession 
or trade of the pupil, that is, he scorns the idea 
of any education of the intellect, simply as such. 
" Can there be any thing more ridiculous," he asks, 
" than that a father should waste his own money, 
and his son's time, in setting him to learn the 
Roman language when at the same time he designs 
him for a trade, wherein he, having no use of 
Latin, fails not to forget that little which he 
brought from school, and which 'tis ten to one 
he abhors for the ill-usage it procured him? 
Could it be believed, unless we have every where 
amongst us examples of it, that a child should 
be forced to learn the rudiments of a language, 
which he is never to use in the course of life that 
he is designed to, and neglect all the while the 
writing a good hand, and casting accounts, which 
are of great advantage in all conditions of life, 
and to most trades indispensably necessary?" 
Nothing of course can be more absurd than to 
neglect in education those matters which are neces- 
sary for a boy's future calling; but the tone of 
Locke's remarks evidently implies more than this, 



108 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

and is condemnatory of any teaching which tends 
to the general cultivation of the mind. 

Now to turn to his modern disciples. The study 
of the Classics had been made the basis of the 
Oxford education, in the reforms which I have 
spoken of, and the Edinburgh Reviewers pro- 
tested, after the manner of Locke, that no good 
could come of a system which was not based upon 
the principle of Utility. 

" Classical Literature," they said, " is the great 
object at Oxford. Many minds, so employed, have 
produced many works and much fame in that de- 
partment ; but if all liberal arts and sciences, use- 
ful to human life, had been taught there, if some 
had dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to 
mathematics, some to experimental philosophy, 
and if every attainment had been honored in the 
mixed ratio of its difficulty and utility, the system 
of such a University would have been much more 
valuable, but the splendor of its name some thing 
less." 

Utility may be made the end of education, in 
two respects : either as regards the individual edu- 
cated, or the community at large. In which light 
do these writers regard it? in the latter. So far 
they differ from Locke, for they consider the ad- 
vancement of science as the supreme and real end 
of a University. This is brought into view in the 
sentences which follow. 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 109 

" When a University has been doing useless 
things for a long time, it appears at first de- 
grading to them to be useful. A set of Lectures 
on Political Economy would be discouraged in 
Oxford, probably despised, probably not per- 
mitted. To discuss the enclosure of commons, 
and to dwell upon imports and exports, to come 
so near to common life, would seem to be undig- 
nified and contemptible. In the same manner, the 
Parr or the Bentley l of the day would be scan- 
dalized, in a L^niversity, to be put on a level with 
the discoverer of a neutral salt; and yet, what 
other measure is there of dignity in intellectual 
labor but usefulness? And what ought the term 
University to mean, but a place where every science 
is taught which is liberal, and at the same time 
useful to mankind? Nothing would so much tend 
to bring classical literature within proper bounds 
as a steady and invariable appeal to utility in our 
appreciation of all human knowledge. . . . Look- 
ing always to real utility as our guide, we should 
see, with equal pleasure, a studious and inquisitive 
mind arranging the productions of nature, in- 
vestigating the qualities of bodies, or mastering 
the difficulties of the learned languages. We 
should not care whether he was chemist, natural- 

1 Samuel Parr (1747-1825), a prominent English scholar ; 
Richard Bentley (1662-1742), the distinguished English Classi- 
cal scholar. 



110 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

1st, or scholar, because we know it to be as neces- 
sary that matter should be studied and subdued 
to the use of man, as that taste should be gratified, 
and imagination inflamed." 

Such then is the enunciation, as far as words 
go, of the theory of Utility in Education ; and 
both on its own account, and for the sake of the 
able men who have advocated it, it has a claim on 
the attention of those whose principles I am here 
representing. Certainly it is specious to contend 
that nothing is worth pursuing but what is useful ; 
and that life is not long enough to expend upon 
interesting, or curious, or brilliant trifles. Nay, 
in one sense, I will grant it is more than specious, 
it is true; but, if so, how do I propose directly 
to meet the objection? Why, Gentlemen, I have 
really met it already, viz., in laying down, that 
intellectual culture is its own end ; for what has 
its end in itself, has its use in itself also. I say, 
if a Liberal Education consists in the culture of 
the intellect, and if that culture be in itself a 
good, here, without going further, is an answer 
to Locke's question ; for if a healthy body is a 
good in itself, why is not a healthy intellect? and 
if a College of Physicians is a useful institution, 
because it contemplates bodily health, why is not 
an Academical Body, though it were simply and 
solely engaged in imparting vigor and beauty 
and grasp to the intellectual portion of our na- 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 111 

ture? And the Reviewers I am quoting seem to 
allow this in their better moments, in a passage 
which, putting aside the question of its justice in 
fact, is sound and true in the principles to which 
it appeals : 

" The present state of classical education," they 
say, " cultivates the imagination a great deal too 
much, and other habits of mind a great deal too 
little, and trains up many young men in a style 
of elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of the 
talents with which nature has endowed them. . . . 
The matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of 
twenty-three or twenty-four is a man principally 
conversant with works of imagination. His feel- 
ings are quick, his fancy lively, and his taste good. 
Talents for speculation and original inquiry he 
has none, nor has he formed the invaluable habit 
of pushing things up to their first principles, or 
of collecting dry and unamusing facts as the 
materials for reasoning. All the solid and mas- 
culine parts of his understanding are left wholly 
without cultivation; he hates the pain of thinking, 
and suspects every man whose boldness and orig- 
inality call upon him to defend his opinions and 
prove his assertions." 

Now, I am not at present concerned with the 
specific question of classical education ; else, I 
might reasonably question the justice of calling 
an intellectual discipline, which embraces the study; 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

of Aristotle, Thucydides, and Tacitus, which in- 
volves Scholarship and Antiquities, imaginative; 
still so far I readily grant, that the cultivation 
of the " understanding," of a " talent for specu- 
lation and original inquiry," and of " the habit of 
pushing things up to their first principles," is a 
principal portion of a good or liberal education. 
If then the Reviewers consider such cultivation 
the characteristic of a useful education, as they 
seem to do in the foregoing passage, it follows, 
that what they mean by " useful " is just what I 
mean by " good " or " liberal : " and Locke's ques- 
tion becomes a verbal one. Whether youths are 
to be taught Latin or verse-making will depend on 
the fact, whether these studies tend to mental cul- 
ture ; but, however this is determined, so far is 
clear, that in that mental culture consists what I 
have called a liberal or non-professional, and what 
the Reviewers call a useful education. 

This is the obvious answer which may be made 
to those who urge upon us the claims of Utility 
in our plans of Education ; but I am not going to 
leave the subject here: I mean to take a wider 
view of it. Let us take " useful," as Locke takes 
it, in its proper and popular sense, and then we 
enter upon a large field of thought, to which I 
cannot do justice in one Discourse, though to- 
day's is all the space that I can give to it. I say, 
let us take " useful " to mean not what is simply 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 113 

good, but what tends to good, or is the instrument 
of good ; and in this sense also, Gentlemen, I will 
show you how a liberal education is truly and fully 
a useful, though it be not a professional, educa- 
tion. " Good " indeed means one thing, and " use- 
ful " means another ; but I lay it down as a prin- 
ciple, which will save us a great deal of anxiety, 
that, though the useful is not always good, the 
good is always useful. Good is not only good, 
but reproductive of good; this is one of its at- 
tributes ; nothing is excellent, beautiful, perfect, 
desirable for its own sake, but it overflows, and 
spreads the likeness of itself all around it. Good 
is prolific; it is not only good to the eye, but 
to the taste ; it not only attracts us, but it com- 
municates itself; it excites first our admiration and 
love, then our desire and our gratitude, and that, 
in proportion to its intenseness and fulness in 
particular instances. A great good will impart 
great good. If then the intellect is so excellent 
a portion of us, and its cultivation so excellent, 
it is not only beautiful, perfect, admirable, and 
noble in itself, but in a true and high sense it 
must be useful to the possessor and to all around 
him : not useful in any low, mechanical, mercantile 
sense, but as diffusing good, or as a blessing, or 
a gift, or power, or a treasure, first to the owner, 
then through him to the world. I say then, if 



114 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

a liberal education be good, it must necessarily be 
useful too. 

You will see what I mean by the parallel of 
bodily health. Health is a good in itself, though 
nothing came of it, and is especially worth seeking 
and cherishing; yet, after all, the blessings which 
attend its presence are so great, while they are 
so close to it and so redound back upon it and 
encircle it, that we never think of it except as 
useful as well as good, and praise and prize it 
for what it does, as well as for what it is, though 
at the same time we cannot point out any definite 
and distinct work or production which it can be 
said to effect. And so as regards intellectual cul- 
ture, I am far from denying utility in this large 
sense as the end of Education, when I lay it down, 
that the culture of the intellect is a good in itself 
and its own end; I do not exclude from the idea 
of intellectual culture what it cannot but be, from 
the very nature of things; I only deny that we 
must be able to point out, before we have any 
right to call it useful, some art, or business, or 
profession, or trade, or work, as resulting from 
it, and as its real and complete end. The parallel 
is exact : As the body may be sacrificed to some 
manual or other toil, whether moderate or op- 
pressive, so may the intellect be devoted to some 
specific profession ; and I do not call this the cul- 
ture of the intellect. Again, as some member or 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 115 

organ of the body may be inordinately used and 
developed, so may memory, or imagination, or the 
reasoning faculty ; and this again is not intellect- 
ual culture. On the other hand, as the body may 
be tended, cherished, and exercised with a simple 
view to its general health, so may the intellect 
also be generally exercised in order to its perfect 
state; and this is its cultivation. 

Again, as health ought to precede labor of the 
body, and as a man in health can do what an 
unhealthy man cannot do, and as of this health 
the properties are strength, energy, agility, grace- 
ful carriage and action, manual dexterity, and en- 
durance of fatigue, so in like manner general cul- 
ture of mind is the best aid to professional and 
scientific study, and educated men can do what 
illiterate cannot ; and the man who has learned to 
think and to reason and to compare and to dis- 
criminate and to analyze, who has refined his taste, 
and formed his judgment, and sharpened his men- 
tal vision, will not indeed at once be a lawyer, or a 
pleader, or an orator, or a statesman, or a phy- 
sician, or a good landlord, or a man of business, 
or a soldier, or an engineer, or a chemist, or a 
geologist, or an antiquarian, but he will be placed 
in that state of intellect in which he can take 
up any one of the sciences or callings I have re- 
ferred to, or any other for which he has a taste or 
special talent, with an ease, a grace, a versatility, 



116 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

and a success, to which another is a stranger. 
In this sense then, and as yet I have said but a 
very few words on a large subject, mental culture 
is emphatically useful. 

If then I am arguing, and shall argue, against 
Professional or Scientific knowledge as the suf- 
ficient end of a University Education, let me not 
be supposed, Gentlemen, to be disrespectful to- 
wards particular studies, or arts, or vocations, 
and those who are engaged in them. In saying 
that Law or Medicine is not the end of a Uni- 
versity course, I do not mean to imply that the 
University does not teach Law or Medicine. What 
indeed can it teach at all, if it does not teach 
something particular? It teaches all knowledge 
by teaching all branches of knowledge, and in no 
other way. I do but say that there will be this 
distinction as regards a Professor of Law, or of 
Medicine, or of Geology, or of Political Economy, 
in a University and out of it, that out of a Uni- 
versity he is in danger of being absorbed and nar- 
rowed by his pursuit, and of giving Lectures which 
are the Lectures of nothing more than a lawyer, 
physician, geologist, or political economist; 
whereas in a University he will just know where 
he and his science stand, he has come to it, as it 
were, from a height, he has taken a survey of all 
knowledge, he is kept from extravagance by the 
very rivalry of other studies, he has gained from 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 117 

them a special illumination and largeness of mind 
and freedom and self-possession, and he treats his 
own in consequence with a philosophy and a re- 
source, which belongs not to the study itself, but 
to his liberal education. 

This then is how I should solve the fallacy, for 
so ! must call it, by which Locke and his disciples 
would frighten us from cultivating the intellect, 
under the notion that no education is useful which 
does not teach us some temporal calling, or some 
mechanical art, or some physical secret. I say 
that a cultivated intellect, because it is a good 
in itself, brings with it a power and a grace to 
every work and occupation which it undertakes, 
and enables us to be more useful, and to a greater 
number. There is a duty we owe to human so- 
ciety as such, to the state to which we belong, to 
the sphere in which we move, to the individuals 
towards whom we are variously related, and 
whom we successively encounter in life ; and that 
philosophical or liberal education, as I have called 
it, which is the proper function of a University, 
if it refuses the foremost place to professional 
interests, does but postpone them to the forma- 
tion of the citizen, and, while it subserves the 
larger interests of philanthropy, prepares also 
for the successful prosecution of those merely 
personal objects, which at first sight it seems to 
disparage. 



118 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

And now, Gentlemen, I wish to be allowed to 
enforce in detail what I have been saying, by 
some extracts from the writings to which I have 
already alluded, and to which I am so greatly 
indebted. 

" It is an undisputed maxim in Political Econ- 
omy," says Dr. Copleston, " that the separation 
of professions and the division of labor tend to the 
perfection of every art, to the wealth of nations, 
to the general comfort and well-being of the com- 
munity. This principle of division is in some in- 
stances pursued so far as to excite the wonder 
of people to whose notice it is for the first time 
pointed out. There is no saying to what extent 
it may not be carried; and the more the powers 
of each individual are concentrated in one employ- 
ment, the greater skill and quickness will he nat- 
urally display in performing it. But, while he 
thus contributes more effectually to the accumula- 
tion of national wealth, he becomes himself more 
and more degraded as a rational being. In pro- 
portion as his sphere of action is narrowed his 
mental powers and habits become contracted ; and 
he resembles a subordinate part of some powerful 
machinery, useful in its place, but insignificant 
and worthless out of it. If it be necessary, as it 
is beyond all question necessary, that society 
should be split into divisions and subdivisions, in 
order that its several duties may be well per- 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 119 

formed, yet we must be careful not to yield up 
ourselves wholly and exclusively to the guidance 
of this system ; we must observe what its evils are, 
and we should modify and restrain it, by bringing 
into action other principles, which may serve as 
a check and counterpoise to the main force. 

" There can be no doubt that every art is im- 
proved by confining the professor of it to that 
single study. But, although the art itself is ad- 
vanced by this concentration of mind in its service, 
the individual who is confined to it goes back. The 
advantage of the community is nearly in an in- 
verse ratio with his own. 

" Society itself requires some other contribution 
from each individual, besides the particular duties 
of his profession. And, if no such liberal inter- 
course be established, it is the common failing of 
human nature, to be engrossed with petty views 
and interests, to underrate the importance of all 
in which we are not concerned, and to carry our 
partial notions into cases where they are inap- 
plicable, to act, in short, as so many unconnected 
units, displacing and repelling one another. 

" In the cultivation of literature is found that 
common link, which, among the higher and mid- 
dling departments of life, unites the jarring sects 
and subdivisions into one interest, which supplies 
common topics, and kindles common feelings, un- 
mixed with those narrow prejudices with which all 



120 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

professions are more or less infected. The knowl- 
edge, too, which is thus acquired, expands and 
enlarges the mind, excites its faculties, and calls 
those limbs and muscles into freer exercise which, 
by too constant use in one direction, not only ac- 
quire an illiberal air, but are apt also to lose some- 
what of their native play and energy. And thus, 
without directly qualifying a man for any of the 
employments of life, it enriches and ennobles all. 
Without teaching him the peculiar business of any 
one office or calling, it enables him to act his part 
in each of them with better grace and more ele- 
vated carriage ; and, if happily planned and con- 
ducted, is a main ingredient in that complete and 
generous education which fits a man ' to perform 
justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the of- 
fices, both private and public, of peace and 
war.' " * 

The view of Liberal Education, advocated in 
these extracts, is expanded by Mr. Davison in 
the Essay to which I have already referred. He 
lays more stress on the " usefulness " of Liberal 
Education in the larger sense of the word than his 
predecessor in the controversy. Instead of argu- 
ing that the Utility of knowledge to the individual 
varies inversely with its Utility to the public, he 
chiefly employs himself on the suggestions con- 
tained in Dr. Copleston's last sentences. He 
1 Vid. Milton on Education. [Author's note.] 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 121 

shows, first, that a Liberal Education is something 
far higher, even in the scale of Utility, than what 
is commonly called a Useful Education, and next, 
that it is necessary or useful for the purposes 
even of that Professional Education which com- 
monly engrosses the title of Useful. The former 
of these two theses he recommends to us in an 
argument from which the following passages are 
selected : 

" It is to take a very contracted view of life," 
he says, " to think with great anxiety how per- 
sons may be educated to superior skill in their de- 
partment, comparatively neglecting or excluding 
the more liberal and enlarged cultivation. In his 
(Mr. Edgeworth's) system, the value of every at- 
tainment is to be measured by its subserviency to 
a calling. The specific duties of that calling are 
exalted at the cost of those free and independent 
tastes and virtues which come in to sustain the 
common relations of society, and raise the indi- 
vidual in them. In short, a man is to be usurped 
by his profession. He is to be clothed in its garb 
from head to foot. His virtues, his science, and 
his ideas are all to be put into a gown or uniform, 
and the whole man to be shaped, pressed, and 
stiffened, in the exact mould of his technical char- 
acter. Any interloping accomplishments, or a 
faculty which cannot be taken into public pay, 
if they are to be indulged in him at all, must creep 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

along under the cloak of his more serviceable priv- 
ileged merits. Such is the state of perfection to 
which the spirit and general tendency of this sys- 
tem would lead us. 

" But the professional character is not the only 
one which a person engaged in a profession has 
to support. He is not always upon duty. There 
are services he owes, which are neither parochial, 
nor forensic, nor military, nor to be described by 
any such epithet of civil regulation, and yet are 
in no wise inferior to those that bear these au- 
thoritative titles ; inferior neither in their intrinsic 
value, nor their moral import, nor their impression 
upon society. As a friend, as a companion, as a 
citizen at large ; in the connections of domestic 
life; in the improvement and embellishment of 
his leisure, he has a sphere of action, revolving, 
if you please, within the sphere of his profession, 
but not clashing with it; in which if he can show 
none of the advantages of an improved under- 
standing, whatever may be his skill or proficiency 
in the other, he is no more than an ill-educated 
man. 

" There is a certain faculty in which all nations 
of any refinement are great practitioners. It is 
not taught at school or college as a distinct 
science; though it deserves that what is taught 
there should be made to have some reference to it ; 
nor is it endowed at all by the public ; everybody 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 123 

being obliged to exercise it for himself in person, 
which he does to the best of his skill. But in 
nothing is there a greater difference than in the 
manner of doing it. The advocates of professional 
learning will smile when we tell them that this 
same faculty which we would have encouraged, is 
simply that of speaking good sense in English, 
without fee or reward, in common conversation. 
They will smile when we lay some stress upon it; 
but in reality it is no such trifle as they imagine. 
Look into the huts of savages, and see, for there 
is nothing to listen to, the dismal blank of their 
stupid hours of silence; their professional avoca- 
tions of war and hunting are over ; and, having 
nothing to do, they have nothing to say. Turn 
to improved life, and you find conversation in all 
its forms the medium of something more than an 
idle pleasure ; indeed, a very active agent in cir- 
culating and forming the opinions, tastes, and 
feelings of a whole people. It makes of itself a 
considerable affair. Its topics are the most pro- 
miscuous all those which do not belong to any 
particular province. As for its power and influ- 
ence, we may fairly say that it is of just the same 
consequence to a man's immediate society, how he 
talks, as how he acts. Now of all those who fur- 
nish their share to rational conversation, a mere 
adept in his own art is universally admitted to 
be the worst. The sterility and uninstructiveness 



124. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

of such a person's social hours are quite proverb- 
ial. Or if he escape being dull, it is only by 
launching into ill-timed, learned loquacity. We 
do not desire of him lectures or speeches ; and he 
has nothing else to give. Among benches he may 
be powerful; but seated on a chair he is quite 
another person. On the other hand, we may af- 
firm, that one of the best companions is a man 
who, to the accuracy and research of a profession, 
has joined a free excursive acquaintance with 
various learning, and caught from it the spirit 
of general observation." 

Having thus shown that a liberal education is 
a real benefit to the subjects of it, as members of 
society, in the various duties and circumstances 
and accidents of life, he goes on, in the next place, 
to show that, over and above those direct jrervices 
which might fairly be expected of it, it actually 
subserves the discharge of those particular func- 
tions, and the pursuit of those particular advan- 
tages, which are connected with professional ex- 
ertion, and to which Professional Education is 
directed. 

" We admit," he observes, " that when a person 
makes a business of one pursuit, he is in the right 
way to eminence in it ; and that divided attention 
will rarely give excellence in many. But our assent 
will go no further. For, to think that the way to 
prepare a person for excelling in any one pursuit 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 125 

(and that is the only point in hand), is to fetter 
his early studies, and cramp the first development 
of his mind, by a reference to the exigencies of that 
pursuit barely, is a very different notion, and one 
which, we apprehend, deserves to be exploded 
rather than received. Possibly a few of the ab- 
stract, insulated kinds of learning might be ap- 
proached in that way. The exceptions to be made 
are very few, and need not be recited. But for 
the acquisition of professional and practical abil- 
ity such maxims are death to it. The main in- 
gredients of that ability are requisite knowledge 
and cultivated faculties ; but, of the two, the latter 
is by far the chief. A man of well-improved facul- 
ties has the command of another's knowledge. A 
man without them, has not the command of his 
own. 

" Of the intellectual powers, the judgment is 
that which takes the foremost lead in life. How 
to form it to the two habits it ought to possess, 
of exactness and vigor, is the problem. It would 
be ignorant presumption so much as to hint at any 
routine of method by which these qualities may 
with certainty be imparted to every or any under- 
standing. Still, however, we may safely lay it 
down that they are not to be got ' by a gatherer 
of simples,' but are the combined essence and ex- 
tracts of many different things, drawn from much 
varied reading and discipline, first, and observa- 



126 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

tion afterwards. For if there be a single intelligi- 
ble point on this head, it is that a man who has 
been trained to think upon one subject or for one 
subject only, will never be a good judge even in 
that one : whereas the enlargement of his circle 
gives him increased knowledge and power in a 
rapidly increasing ratio. So much do ideas act, 
not as solitary units, but by grouping and com- 
bination ; and so clearly do all the things that fall 
within the proper province of the same faculty of 
the mind, intertwine with and support each other. 
Judgment lives as it were by comparison and dis- 
crimination. Can it be doubted, then, whether the 
range and extent of that assemblage of things 
upon which it is practised in its first essays are 
of use to its power? 

" To open our way a little further on this mat- 
ter, we will define what we mean by the power 
of judgment; and then try to ascertain among 
what kind of studies the improvement of it may be 
expected at all. 

" Judgment does not stand here for a certain 
homely, useful quality of intellect, that guards 
a person from committing mistakes to the injury 
of his fortunes or common reputation ; but for 
that master-principle of business, literature, and 
talent, which gives him strength in any subject he 
chooses to grapple with, and enables him to seise 
the strong point in it. Whether this definition be 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 127 

metaphysically correct or not, it comes home to 
the substance of our inquiry. It describes the 
power that every one desires to possess when he 
comes to act in a profession, or elsewhere ; and 
corresponds with our best idea of a cultivated 
mind. 

" Next, it will not be denied, that in order to 
do any good to the judgment, the mind must be 
employed upon such subjects as come within the 
cognizance of that faculty, and give some real 
exercise to its perceptions. Here we have a rule 
of selection by which the different parts of learn- 
ing may be classed for our purpose. Those which 
belong to the province of the judgment are re- 
ligion (in its evidences and interpretation), ethics, 
history, eloquence, poetry, theories of general 
speculation, the fine arts, and works of wit. Great 
as the variety of these large divisions of learning 
may appear, they are all held in union by two 
capital principles of connection. First, they are 
all quarried out of one and the same great subject 
of man's moral, social, and feeling nature. And 
secondly, they are all under the control (more or 
less strict) of the same power of moral reason." 

" If these studies," he continues, " be such as 
give a direct play and exercise to the faculty of 
the judgment, then they are the true basis of 
education for the active and inventive powers, 
whether destined for a profession or any other 



128 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

use. Miscellaneous as the assemblage may appear, 
of history, eloquence, poetry, ethics, etc., blended 
together, they will all conspire in an union of 
effect. They are necessary mutually to explain 
and interpret each other. The knowledge derived 
from them all will amalgamate, and the habits of 
a mind versed and practised in them by turns will 
join to produce a richer vein of thought and of 
more general and practical application than could 
be obtained of any single one, as the fusion of 
the metals into Corinthian brass gave the artist 
his most ductile and perfect material. Might we 
venture to imitate an author (whom indeed it is 
much safer to take as an authority than to at- 
tempt to copy), Lord Bacon, in some of his con- 
cise illustrations of the comparative utility of the 
different studies, we should say that history would 
give fulness, moral philosophy strength, and po- 
etry elevation to the understanding. Such in 
reality is the natural force and tendency of the 
studies ; but there are few minds susceptible enough 
to derive from them any sort of virtue adequate 
to those high expressions. We must be contented 
therefore to lower our panegyric to this, that a 
person cannot avoid receiving some infusion and 
tincture, at least, of those several qualities, from 
that course of diversified reading. One thing is 
unquestionable, that the elements of general reason 
arc not to be found fully and truly expressed in 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 129 

any one kind of study; and that he who would 
wish to know her idiom, must read it in many 
books. 

" If different studies are useful for aiding, they 
are still more useful for correcting each other ; 
for as they have their particular merits severally, 
so they have their defects, and the most extensive 
acquaintance with one can produce only an intel- 
lect either too flashy or too jejune, or infected 
with some other fault of confined reading. His- 
tory, for example, shows things as they are, that 
is, the morals and interests of men disfigured and 
perverted by all their imperfections of passion, 
folly, and ambition ; philosophy strips the picture 
too much ; poetry adorns it too much ; the con- 
centrated lights of the three correct the false pe- 
culiar coloring of each, and show us the truth. 
The right mode of thinking upon it is to be had 
from them taken all together, as every one must 
know who has seen their united contributions of 
thought and feeling expressed in the masculine 
sentiment of our immortal statesman, Mr. Burke, 
whose eloquence is inferior only to his more ad- 
mirable wisdom. If any mind improved like his, 
is to be our instructor, we must go to the fountain- 
head of things as he did, and study not his works 
but his method; by the one we may become feeble 
imitators, by the other arrive at some ability of 
our own. But, as all biography assures us, he, 



130 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

and every other able thinker, has been formed, not 
by a parsimonious admeasurement of studies to 
some definite future object (which is Mr. Edge- 
worth's maxim), but by taking a wide and liberal 
compass, and thinking a great deal on many sub- 
jects with no better end in view than because the 
exercise was one which made them more rational 
and intelligent beings." 

But I must bring these extracts to an end. To- 
day I have confined myself to saying that that 
training of the intellect, which is best for the 
individual himself, best enables him to discharge 
his duties to society. The Philosopher, indeed, 
and the man of the world differ in their very 
notion, but the methods, by which they are re- 
spectively formed, are pretty much the same. The 
Philosopher has the same command of matters 
of thought, which the true citizen and gentleman 
has of matters of business and conduct. If then 
a practical end must be assigned to a University 
course, I say it is that of training good members 
of society. Its art is the art of social life, and 
its end is fitness for the world. It neither con- 
fines its views to particular professions on the 
one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on 
the other. Works indeed of genius fall under 
no art ; heroic minds come under no rule ; a Uni- 
versity is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal 
authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, 



PROFESSIONAL SKILL 131 

or conquerors of nations. It docs not promise a 
generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons 
or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares, 
though such miracles of nature it has before now 
contained within its precincts. Nor is it content 
on the other hand with forming the critic or the 
experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, 
though such too it includes within its scope. But 
a University training is the great ordinary means 
to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising 
the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the 
public mind, at purifying the national taste, at 
supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm 
and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving 
enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, 
at facilitating the exercise of political power, and 
refining the intercourse of private life. It is the 
education which gives a man a clear conscious 
view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth 
in developing them, an eloquence in expressing 
them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him 
to see things as they are, to go right to the point, 
to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what 
is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. 
It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and 
to master any subject with facility. It shows 
him how to accommodate himself to others, how 
to throw himself into their state of mind, how to 
bring before them his own, how to influence them, 



132 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

how to come to an understanding with them, how 
to bear with them. He is at home in any society, 
he has common ground with every class ; he knows 
when to speak and when to be silent ; he is able to 
converse, he is able to listen ; he can ask a question 
pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when 
he has nothing to impart himself ; he is ever ready, 
yet never in the way ; he is a pleasant companion, 
and a comrade you can depend upon ; he knows 
when to be serious and when to trifle, and he has 
a sure tact which enables him to trifle with grace- 
fulness and to be serious with effect. He has the 
repose of a mind which lives in itself, while it lives 
in the world, and which has resources for its hap- 
piness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has 
a gift which serves him in public, and supports 
him in retirement, without which good fortune is 
but vulgar, and with which failure and disappoint- 
ment have a charm. The art which tends to make 
a man all this, is in the object which it pursues as 
useful as the art of wealth or the art of health, 
though it is less susceptible of method, and less 
tangible, less certain, less complete in its result. 



ON SCIENCE AND ART IN RELA- 
TION TO EDUCATION l 

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

WHEN a man is honored by such a request as 
that which reached me from the authorities of 
your institution some time ago, I think the first 
thing that occurs to him is that which occurred 
to those who were bidden to the feast in the Gospel 
to begin to make an excuse ; and probably all 
the excuses suggested on that famous occasion 
crop up in his mind one after the other, including 
his " having married a wife," as reasons for not 
doing what he is asked to do. But, in my own 
case, and on this particular occasion, there were 
other difficulties of a sort peculiar to the time, 
and more or less personal to myself ; because I felt 
that, if I came amongst you, I should be expected, 
and, indeed, morally compelled, to speak upon the 
subject of Scientific Education. And then there 
arose in my mind the recollection of a fact, which 
probably no one here but myself remembers; 
namely, that some fourteen years ago I was the 

1 An address to the members of the Liverpool Institution, 
1882. 

133 



134 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

guest of a citizen of yours, who bears the honored 
name of Rathbone, at a very charming and pleas- 
ant dinner given by the Philomathic Society ; and 
I there and then, and in this very city, made a 
speech upon the topic of Scientific Education. 
Under these circumstances, you see, one runs two 
dangers the first, of repeating one's self, al- 
though I may fairly hope that everybody has for- 
gotten the fact I have just now mentioned, except 
myself ; and the second, and even greater difficulty, 
is the danger of saying something different from 
what one said before, because then, however for- 
gotten your previous speech may be, somebody 
finds out its existence, and there goes on that 
process so hateful to members of Parliament, which 
may be denoted by the term " Hansardization." 
Under these circumstances, I came to the con- 
clusion that the best thing I could do was to take 
the bull by the horns, and to " Hansardize " my- 
self, to put before you, in the briefest possible 
way, the three or four propositions which I en- 
deavored to support on the occasion of the speech 
to which I have referred ; and then to ask myself, 
supposing you were asking me, whether I had any- 
thing to retract, or to modify, in them, in virtue 
of the increased experience, and, let us charitably 
hope, the increased wisdom of an added fourteen 
years. 

Now, the points to which I directed particular 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 135 

attention on that occasion were these: in the first 
place, that instruction in physical science supplies 
information of a character of especial value, both 
in a practical and a speculative point of view 
information which cannot be obtained otherwise; 
and, in the second place, that, as educational dis- 
cipline, it supplies, in a better form than any other 
study can supply, exercise in a special form of 
logic, and a peculiar method of testing the validity 
of our processes of inquiry. I said further, that, 
even at that time, a great and increasing attention 
was being paid to physical science in our schools 
and colleges, and that, most assuredly, such atten- 
tion must go on growing and increasing, until 
education in these matters occupied a very much 
larger share of the time which is given to teaching 
and training, than had been the case heretofore. 
And I threw all the strength of argumentation of 
which I was possessed into the support of these 
propositions. But I venture to remind you, also, 
of some other words I used at that time, and 
which I ask permission to read to you. They were 
these : " There are other forms of culture be- 
sides physical science, and I should be profoundly 
sorry to see the fact forgotten, or even to observe 
a tendency to starve or cripple literary or aesthetic 
culture for the sake of science. Such a narrow 
view of the nature of education has nothing to do 
with my firm conclusion that a complete and thor- 



136 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

ough scientific culture ought to be introduced into 
all schools." 

I say I desire, in commenting upon these various 
points, and judging them as fairly as I can by 
the light of increased experience, to particularly 
emphasize this last, because I am told, although 
I assuredly do not know it of my own knowledge 
though I think if the fact were so I ought to 
know it, being tolerably well acquainted with that 
which goes on in the scientific world, and which 
has gone on there for the last thirty years that 
there is a kind of sect, or horde, of scientific 
Goths and Vandals, who think it would be proper 
and desirable to sweep away all other forms of 
culture and instruction, except those in physical 
science, and to make them the universal and ex- 
clusive, or, at any rate, the dominant training 
of the human mind of the future generation. This 
is not my view I do not believe that it is any- 
body's view, but it is attributed to those who, 
like myself, advocate scientific education. I there- 
fore dwell strongly upon the point, and I beg you 
to believe that the words I have just now read 
were by no means intended by me as a sop to the 
Cerberus of culture. I have not been in the habit 
of offering sops to any kind of Cerberus; but it 
was an expression of profound conviction on my 
own part a conviction forced upon me not only 
by my mental constitution, but by the lessons of 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 137 

what is now becoming a somewhat long experience 
of varied conditions of life. 

I am not about to trouble you with my auto- 
biography ; the omens are hardly favorable, at 
present, for work of that kind. But I should like 
if I may do so without appearing, what I ear- 
nestly desire not to be, egotistical, I should like 
to make it clear to you, that such notions as these, 
which are sometimes attributed to me, are, as I 
have said, inconsistent with my mental constitution, 
and still more inconsistent with the upshot of the 
teaching of my experience. For I can certainly 
claim for myself that sort of mental temperament 
which can say that nothing human comes amiss 
to it. I have never yet met with any branch of 
human knowledge which I have found unattractive 
which it would not have been pleasant to me to 
follow, so far as I could go ; and I have yet to 
meet with any form of art in which it has not been 
possible for me to take as acute a pleasure as, I 
believe, it is possible for men to take. 

And with respect to the circumstances of life, it 
so happens that it has been my fate to know many 
lands and many climates, and to be familiar, by 
personal experience, with almost every form of 
society, from the uncivilized savage of Papua and 
Australia and the civilized savages of the slums 
and dens of the poverty-stricken parts of great 
cities, to those who, perhaps, are occasionally 



138 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

the somewhat over-civilized members of our upper 
ten thousand. And I have never found, in any 
of these conditions of life, a deficiency of some- 
thing which was attractive. Savagery has its 
pleasures, I assure you, as well as civilization, and 
I may even venture to confess if you will not let 
a whisper of the matter get back to London, 
where I am known I am even fain to confess, that 
sometimes in the din and throng of what is called 
" a brilliant reception " the vision crosses my 
mind of waking up from the soft plank which had 
afforded me satisfactory sleep during the hours 
of the night, in the bright dawn of a tropical 
morning, when my comrades were yet asleep, when 
every sound was hushed, except the little lap-lap 
of the ripples against the sides of the boat, and 
the distant twitter of the sea-bird on the reef. 
And when that vision crosses my mind, I am free 
to confess I desire to be back in the boat again. 
So that, if I share with those strange persons to 
whose asserted, but still hypothetical existence I 
have referred, the want of appreciation of forms 
of culture other than the pursuit of physical 
science, all I can say is, that it is in spite of my 
constitution, and in spite of my experience, that 
such should be my fate. 

But now let me turn to another point, or rather 
to two other points, with which I propose to 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 139 

occupy myself. How far does the experience of 
the last fourteen years justify the estimate which 
I ventured to put forward of the value of scientific 
culture, and of the share the increasing share 
which it must take in ordinary education? Hap- 
pily, in respect to that matter, you need not rely 
upon my testimony. In the last half-dozen num- 
bers of the Journal of Education, you will find 
a series of very interesting and remarkable papers, 
by gentlemen who are practically engaged in the 
business of education in our great public and other 
schools, telling us what is doing in these schools, 
and what is their experience of the results of 
scientific education there, so far as it has gone. 
I am not going to trouble you with an abstract 
of those papers, which are well worth your study in 
their fulness and completeness, but I have copied 
out one remarkable passage, because it seems to 
me so entirely to bear out what I have formerly 
ventured to say about the value of science, both 
as to its subject-matter and as to the discipline 
which the learning of science involves. It is from 
a paper by Mr. Worthington one of the masters 
at Clifton, the reputation of which school you 
know well, and at the head of which is an old 
friend of mine, the Rev. Mr. Wilson to whom 
much credit is due for being one of the first, as I 
can say from my own knowledge, to take up this 



140 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

question and work it into practical shape. What 
Mr. Worthington says is this : 

It is not easy to exaggerate the importance of the 
information imparted by certain branches of science; 
it modifies the whole criticism of life made in maturer 
years. The study has often, on a mass of boys, a cer- 
tain influence which, I think, was hardly anticipated, 
and to which a good deal of value must be attached 
an influence as much moral as intellectual, which is 
shown in the increased and increasing respect for pre- 
cision of statement, and for that form of veracity which 
consists in the acknowledgment of difficulties. It pro- 
duces a real effect to find that Nature cannot be im- 
posed upon, and the attention given to experimental 
lectures, at first superficial and curious only, soon 
becomes minute, serious, and practical. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I could not have chosen 
better words to express in fact, I have, in other 
words, expressed the same conviction in former 
days what the influence of scientific teaching, if 
properly carried out, must be. 

But now comes the question of properly carry- 
ing it out, because, when I hear the value of school 
teaching in physical science disputed, my first im- 
pulse is to ask the disputer, " What have you 
known about it? " and he generally tells me some 
lamentable case of failure. Then I ask, " What 
are the circumstances of the case, and how was 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 141 

the teaching carried out? " I remember, some 
few years ago, hearing of the head-master of a 
large school, who had expressed great dissatisfac- 
tion with the adoption of the teaching of physical 
science and that after experiment. But the ex- 
periment consisted in this in asking one of the 
junior masters in the school to get up science, in 
order to teach it ; and the young gentleman went 
away for a year and got up science and taught it. 
Well, I have no doubt that the result was as dis- 
appointing as the head-master said it was, and I 
have no doubt that it ought to have been as dis- 
appointing, and far more disappointing too ; for, 
if this kind of instruction is to be of any good at 
all, if it is not to be less than no good, if it is to 
take the place of that which is already of some 
good, then there are several points which must be 
attended to. 

And the first of these is the proper selection of 
topics, the second is practical teaching, the third 
is practical teachers, and the fourth is sufficiency 
of time. If these four points are not carefully 
attended to by anybody who undertakes the teach- 
ing of physical science in schools, my advice to 
him is, to let it alone. I will not dwell at any 
length upon the first point, because there is a 
general consensus of opinion as to the nature of 
the topics which should be chosen. The second 
point practical teaching is one of great impor- 



142 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

tance, because it requires more capital to set it 
agoing, demands more time, and, last, but by no 
means least, it requires much more personal ex- 
ertion and trouble on the part of those professing 
to teach, than is the case with other kinds of in- 
struction. 

When I accepted the invitation to be here this 
evening, your secretary was good enough to send 
me the addresses which have been given by dis- 
tinguished persons who have previously occupied 
this chair. I don't know whether he had a ma- 
licious desire to alarm me; but, however that may 
be, I read the addresses, and derived the greatest 
pleasure and profit from some of them, and from 
none more than from the one given by the great 
historian, Mr. Freeman, which delighted me most 
of all; and, if I had not been ashamed of plagiariz- 
ing, and if I had not been sure of being found 
out, I should have been glad to have copied very 
much of what Mr. Freeman said, simply putting 
in the word science for history. There was one 
notable passage, " The difference between good 
and bad teaching mainly consists in this, whether 
the words used are really clothed with a meaning 
or not." And Mr. Freeman gives a remarkable 
example of this. He says, when a little girl was 
asked where Turkey was, she answered that it was 
in the yard with the other fowls, and that showed 
she had a definite idea connected with the word 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 143 

Turkey, and was, so far, worthy of praise. ,1 quite 
agree with that commendation ; but what a curious 
thing it is that one should now find it necessary 
to urge that this is the be-all and end-all of sci- 
entific instruction the sine qua non, the abso- 
lutely necessary condition, and yet that it was 
insisted upon more than two hundred years ago by 
one of the greatest men science ever possessed in 
this country, William Harvey. Harvey wrote, or 
at least published, only two small books, one of 
which is the well-known treatise on the circulation 
of the blood. The other, the Exercitationes de Gen- 
eratione, 1 is less known, but not less remarkable. 
And not the least valuable part of it is the preface, 
in which there occurs this passage : " Those who, 
reading the words of authors, do not form sensible 
images of the things referred to, obtain no true 
ideas, but conceive false imaginations and inane 
phantasms." You see, William Harvey's words 
are just the same in substance as those of Mr. 
Freeman, only they happen to be rather more than 
two centuries older. So that what I am now 
saying has its application elsewhere than in 
science ; but assuredly in science the condition of 
knowing, of your own knowledge, things which 
you talk about, is absolutely imperative. 

I remember, in my youth, there were detestable 

^[Anatomical] Exercises on the Generation [of Animals] the 
first part of a long title. 



THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

books which ought to have been burned by the 
hands of the common hangman, for they contained 
questions and answers to be learned by heart, of 
this sort, " What is a horse? The horse is termed 
Equus caballus; belongs to the class Mammalia; 
order, Pachydermata ; family, Solidungula." Was 
any human being wiser for learning that magic 
formula? Was he not more foolish, inasmuch as 
he was deluded into taking words for knowledge? 
It is that kind of teaching that one wants to get 
rid of, and banished out of science. Make it as 
little as you like, but, unless that which is taught 
is based on actual observation and familiarity 
with facts, it is better left alone. 

There are a great many people who imagine that 
elementary teaching might be properly carried out 
by teachers provided with only elementary knowl- 
edge. Let me assure you that that is the pro- 
foundest mistake in the world. There is nothing 
so difficult to do as to write a good elementary 
book, and there is nobody so hard to teach properly 
and well as people who know nothing about a 
subject, and I will tell you why. If I address an 
audience of persons who are occupied in the same 
line of work as myself, I can assume that they 
know a vast deal, and that they can find out the 
blunders I make. If they don't, it is their fault 
and not mine ; but when I appear before a body of 
people who know nothing about the matter, who 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 145 

take for gospel whatever I say, surely it becomes 
needful that I consider what I say, make sure that 
it will bear examination, and that I do not im- 
pose upon the credulity of those who have faith 
in me. In the second place, it involves that dif- 
ficult process of knowing what you know so well 
that you can talk about it as you can talk about 
your ordinary business. A man can always talk 
about his own business. He can always make it 
plain ; but, if his knowledge is hearsay, he is afraid 
to go beyond what he has recollected, and put it 
before those that are ignorant in such a shape 
that they shall comprehend it. That is why, to 
be a good elementary teacher, to teach the elements 
of any subject, requires most careful considera- 
tion, if you are a master of the subject; and, if 
you are not a master of it, it is needful you should 
familiarize yourself with so much as you are called 
upon to teach soak yourself in it, so to speak 
until you know it as part of your daily life and 
daily knowledge, and then you will be able to teach 
anybody. That is what I mean by practical 
teachers, and, although the deficiency of such 
teachers is being remedied to a large extent, I 
think it is one which has long existed, and which 
has existed from no fault of those who undertook 
to teach, but because, until the last score of years, 
it absolutely was not possible for any one in a 
great many branches of science, whatever his de- 



146 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

sire might be, to get instruction which would en- 
able him to be a good teacher of elementary things. 
All that is being rapidly altered, and I hope it 
will soon become a thing of the past. 

The last point I have referred to is the ques- 
tion of the sufficiency of time. And here comes 
the rub. The teaching of science needs time, as 
any other subject; but it needs more time pro- 
portionally than other subjects, for the amount 
of work obviously done, if the teaching is to be, 
as I have said, practical. Work done in a labora- 
tory involves a good deal of expenditure of time 
without always an obvious result, because we do 
not see anything of that quiet process of soaking 
the facts into the mind, which takes place through 
the organs of the senses. On this ground there 
must be ample time given to science teaching. 
What that amount of time should be is a point 
which I need not discuss now ; in fact, it is a point 
which cannot be settled until one has made up 
one's mind about various other questions. 

All, then, that I have to ask for, on behalf of 
the scientific people, if I may venture to speak 
for more than myself, is that you should put 
scientific teaching into what statesmen call the 
condition of " the most favored nation " ; that is 
to say, that it shall have as large a share of the 
time given to education as any other principal 
subject. You may say that that is a very vague 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 147 

statement, because the value of the allotment of 
time, under those circumstances, depends upon the 
number of principal subjects. It is x the time, 
and an unknown quantity of principal subjects 
dividing that, and science taking shares with the 
rest. That shows that we cannot deal with this 
question fully until we have made up our minds as 
to what the principal subjects of education ought 
to be. 

I know quite well that launching myself into 
this discussion is a very dangerous operation ; that 
it is a very large subject, and one which is difficult 
to deal with, however much I may trespass upon 
your patience in the time allotted to me. But the 
discussion is so fundamental, it is so completely 
impossible to make up one's mind on these matters 
until one has settled the question, that I will even 
venture to make the experiment. A great lawyer- 
statesman and philosopher of a former age I 
mean Francis Bacon said that truth came out of 
error much more rapidly than it came out of 
confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that 
saying. Next to being right in this world, the 
best of all things is to be clearly and definitely 
wrong, because you will come out somewhere. If 
you go buzzing about between right and wrong, 
vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere ; 
but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and per- 
sistently wrong, you must, some of these days, 



148 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

liave the extreme good fortune of knocking your 
head against a fact, and that sets you all straight 
again. So I will not trouble myself as to whether 
I may be right or wrong in what I am about to 
say, but at any rate I hope to be clear and defi- 
nite; and then you will be able to judge for your- 
selves whether, in following out the train of 
thought I have to introduce, you knock your heads 
against facts or not. 

I take it that the whole object of education 
is, in the first place, to train the faculties of the 
young in such a manner as to give their possessors 
the best chance of being happy and useful in their 
generation; and, in the second place, to furnish 
them with the most important portions of that 
immense capitalized experience of the human race 
which we call knowledge of various kinds. I am 
using the term knowledge in its widest possible 
sense; and the question is, what subjects to select 
by training and discipline, in which the object 
I have just defined may be best attained. 

I must call your attention further to this fact, 
that all the subjects of our thoughts all feelings 
and propositions (leaving aside our sensations as 
the mere materials and occasions of thinking and 
feeling), all our mental furniture may be classi- 
fied under one of two heads as either within the 
province of the intellect, something that can be 
put into propositions and affirmed or denied; or 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 149 

as within the province of feeling, or that which, 
before the name was defiled, was called the aesthetic 
side of our nature, and which can neither be 
proved nor disproved, but only felt and known. 

According to the classification which 1 have put 
before you, then, the subjects of all knowledge are 
divisible into the two groups, matters of science 
and matters of art; for all things with which the 
reasoning faculty alone is occupied, come under 
the province of science ; and in the broadest sense, 
and not in the narrow and technical sense in which 
we are now accustomed to use the word art, all 
things feelable, all things which stir our emotions, 
come under the term of art, in the sense of the 
subject-matter of the aesthetic faculty. So that 
we are shut up to this that the business of edu- 
cation is, in the first place, to provide the young 
with the means and the habit of observation ; and, 
secondly, to supply the subject-matter of knowl- 
edge either in the shape of science or of art, or 
of both combined. 

Now, it is a very remarkable fact but it is true 
of most things in this world that there is hardly 
anything one-sided, or of one nature ; and it is not 
immediately obvious what of the things that inter- 
est us may be regarded as pure science, and what 
may be regarded as pure art. It may be that 
there are some peculiarly constituted persons who, 
before they have advanced far into the depths of 



150 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

geometry, find artistic beauty about it ; but, taking 
the generality of mankind, I think it may be said 
that, when they begin to learn mathematics, their 
whole souls are absorbed in tracing the connection 
between the premisses and the conclusion, and that 
to them geometry is pure science. So I think it 
may be said that mechanics and osteology are pure 
science. On the other hand, melody in music is 
pure art. You cannot reason about it ; there is 
no proposition involved in it. So, again, in the 
pictorial art, an arabesque, or a " harmony in 
grey," touches none but the aesthetic faculty. But 
a great mathematician, and even many persons 
who are not great mathematicians, will tell you 
that they derive immense pleasure from geomet- 
rical reasonings. Everybody knows mathema- 
ticians speak of solutions and problems as " ele- 
gant," and they tell you that a certain mass of 
mystic symbols is " beautiful, quite lovely." Well, 
you do not see it. They do see it, because the 
intellectual process, the process of comprehending 
the reasons symbolized by these figures and these 
signs, confers upon them a sort of pleasure, such 
as an artist has in visual symmetry. Take a 
science of which I may speak with more confidence, 
and which is the most attractive of those I am 
concerned with. It is what we call morphology, 
which consists in tracing out the unity in variety 
of the infinitely diversified structures of animals 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 151 

and plants. I cannot give you any example of 
a thorough aesthetic pleasure more intensely real 
than a pleasure of this kind the pleasure which 
arises in one's mind when a whole mass of different 
structures run into one harmony as the expression 
of a central law. That is where the province 
of art overlays and embraces the province of in- 
tellect. And, if I may venture to express an opin- 
ion on such a subject, the great majority of 
forms of art are not in the sense in which I just 
now defined them, pure art ; but they derive much 
of their quality from simultaneous and even un- 
conscious excitement of the intellect. 

When I was a boy, I was very fond of music, 
and I am so now; and it so happened that I had 
the opportunity of hearing much good music. 
Among other things, I had abundant opportuni- 
ties of hearing that great old master, Sebastian 
Bach. I remember perfectly well though I knew 
nothing about music then, and, I may add, know 
nothing whatever about it now the intense satis- 
faction and delight which I had in listening, by the 
hour together, to Bach's fugues. It is a pleasure 
which remains with me, I am glad to think; but, 
of late years, I have tried to find out the why and 
wherefore, and it has often occurred to me that 
the pleasure derived from musical compositions of 
this kind is essentially of the same nature as that 
which is derived from pursuits which are com- 



152 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

monly regarded as purely intellectual. I mean 
that the source of pleasure is exactly the same 
as in most of my problems in morphology that 
you have the theme in one of the old master's works 
followed out in all its endless variations, always 
appearing and always reminding you of unity 
in variety. So in painting; what is called 
" truth to nature " is the intellectual element 
coming in, and truth to nature depends entirely 
upon the intellectual culture of the person to whom 
art is addressed. If you are in Australia, you may 
get credit for being a good artist I mean among 
the natives if you can draw a kangaroo after a 
fashion. But, among men of higher civilization, 
the intellectual knowledge we possess brings its 
criticism into our appreciation of works of art, 
and we are obliged to satisfy it, as well as the 
mere sense of beauty in color and in outline. And 
so, the higher the culture and information of those 
whom art addresses, the more exact and precise 
must be what we call its " truth to nature." 

If we turn to literature, the same thing is true, 
and you find works of literature which may be 
said to be pure art. A little song of Shakespeare 
or of Goethe is pure art ; it is exquisitely beau- 
tiful, although its intellectual content may be 
nothing. A series of pictures is made to pass be- 
fore your mind by the meaning of words, and the 
effect is a melody of ideas. Nevertheless, the great 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 153 

mass of the literature we esteem is valued, not 
merely because of having artistic form, but because 
of its intellectual content;. and the value is the 
higher the more precise, distinct, and true is that 
intellectual content. And, if you will let me for 
a moment speak of the very highest forms of 
literature, do we not regard them as highest simply 
because the more we know the truer they seem, and 
the more competent we are to appreciate beauty 
the more beautiful they are? No man ever under- 
stands Shakespeare until he is old, though the 
youngest may admire him, the reason being that 
he satisfies the artistic instinct of the youngest 
and harmonizes with the ripest and richest experi- 
ence of the oldest. 

I have said this much to draw your attention to 
what, to my mind, lies at the root of all this matter, 
and at the understanding of one another by the 
men of science on the one hand, and the men of 
literature, and history, and art, on the other. It 
is not a question whether one order of study or 
another should predominate. It is a question of 
what topics of education you shall select which 
will combine all the needful elements in such due 
proportion as to give the greatest amount of food, 
support, and encouragement to those faculties 
which enable us to appreciate truth, and to profit 
by those sources of innocent happiness which are 
open to us, and, at the same time, to avoid that 



154 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

which is bad, and coarse, and ugly, and keep 
clear of the multitude of pitfalls and dangers 
which beset those who break through the natural 
or moral laws. 

I address myself, in this spirit, to the considera- 
tion of the question of the value of purely literary 
education. Is it good and sufficient, or is it insuf- 
ficient and bad? Well, here I venture to say that 
there are literary educations and literary educa- 
tions. If I am to understand by that term the 
education that was current in the great majority 
of middle-class schools, and upper schools too, in 
this country when I was a boy, and which con- 
sisted absolutely and almost entirely in keeping 
boys for eight or ten years at learning the rules 
of Latin and Greek grammar, construing certain 
Latin and Greek authors, and possibly making 
verses which, had they been English verses, would 
have been condemned as abominable doggerel, if 
that is what you mean by liberal education, then 
I say it is scandalously insufficient and almost 
worthless. My reason for saying so is not from 
the point of view of science at all, but from the 
point of view of literature. I say the thing pro- 
fesses to be literary education that is not a lit- 
erary education at all. It was not literature at 
all that was taught, but science in a very bad 
form. It is quite obvious that grammar is science 
and not literature. The analysis of a text by the 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 155 

help of the rules of grammar is just as much a 
scientific operation as the analysis of a chemical 
compound by the help of the rules of chemical 
analysis. There is nothing that appeals to the 
aesthetic faculty in that operation; and I ask 
multitudes of men of my own age, who went 
through this process, whether they ever had a 
conception of art or literature until they obtained 
it for themselves after leaving school? Then you 
may say, " If that is so, if the education was sci- 
entific, why cannot you be satisfied with it? " I 
say, because although it is a scientific training, it 
is of the most inadequate and inappropriate kind. 
If there is any good at all in scientific education 
it is that men should be trained, as I said before, 
to know things for themselves at first hand, and 
that they should understand every step of the 
reason of that which they do. 

I desire to speak with the utmost respect of that 
science philology of which grammar is a part 
and parcel; yet everybody knows that grammar, 
as it is usually learned at school, affords no sci- 
entific training. It is taught just as you would 
teach the rules of chess or draughts. On the 
other hand, if I am to understand by a literary 
education the study of the literatures of either 
ancient or modern nations but especially those 
of antiquity, and especially that of ancient 
Greece; if this literature is studied, not merely 



156 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

from the point of view of philological science, and 
its practical application to the interpretation of 
texts, but as an exemplification of and commentary 
upon the principles of art ; if you look upon the 
literature of a people as a chapter in the develop- 
ment of the human mind, if you work out this in 
a broad spirit, and with such collateral references 
to morals and politics, and physical geography, 
and the like as are needful to make you compre- 
hend what the meaning of ancient literature and 
civilization is, then, assuredly, it affords a splen- 
did and noble education. But I still think it is 
susceptible of improvement, and that no man will 
ever comprehend the real secret of the difference 
between the ancient world and our present time, 
unless he has learned to see the difference which 
the late development of physical science has made 
between the thought of this day and the thought 
of that, and he will never see that difference, un- 
less he has some practical insight into some 
branches of physical science; and you must re- 
member that a literary education such as that 
which I have just referred to, is out of the reach 
of those whose school life is cut short at sixteen 
or seventeen. 

But, you will say, all this is fault-finding; let 
us hear what you have in the way of positive sug- 
gestion. Then I am bound to tell you that, if 
I could make a clean sweep of everything I am 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 157 



glad I cannot because I might, and probably 
should, make mistakes, but if I could make a 
clean sweep of everything and start afresh, I 
should, in the first place, secure that training of 
the young in reading and writing, and in the habit 
of attention and observation, both to that which 
is told them, and that which they see, which every- 
body agrees to. But in addition to that, I should 
make it absolutely necessary for everybody, for 
a longer or shorter period, to learn to draw. 
Now, you may say, there are some people who 
cannot draw, however much they may be taught. 
I deny that in toto, because I never yet met with 
anybody who could not learn to write. Writing is 
a form of drawing ; therefore if you give the same 
attention and trouble to drawing as you do to 
writing, depend upon it, there is nobody who 
cannot be made to draw, more or less well. Do 
not misapprehend me. I do not say for one mo- 
ment you would make an artistic draughtsman. 
Artists are not made ; they grow. You may im- 
prove the natural faculty in that direction, but 
you cannot make it; but you can teach simple 
drawing, and you will find it an implement of 
learning of extreme value. I do not think its 
value can be exaggerated, because it gives you the 
means of training the young in attention and ac- 
curacy, which are the two things in which all 
mankind are more deficient than in any other 



158 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

mental quality whatever. The whole of my life 
has been spent in trying to give my proper atten- 
tion to things and to be accurate, and I have not 
succeeded as well as I could wish; and other peo- 
ple, I am afraid, are not much more fortunate. 
You cannot begin this habit too early, and I con- 
sider there is nothing of so great a value as the 
habit of drawing, to secure those two desirable 
ends. 

Then we come to the subject-matter, whether 
scientific or aesthetic, of education, and I should 
naturally have no question at all about teaching 
the elements of physical science of the kind I have 
sketched, in a practical manner; but among sci- 
entific topics, using the word scientific in the 
broadest sense, I would also include the elements 
of the theory of morals and of that of political 
and social life, which, strangely enough, it never 
seems to occur to anybody to teach a child. I 
would have the history of our own country, and 
of all the influences which have been brought to 
bear upon it, with incidental geography, not as 
a mere chronicle of reigns and battles, but as a 
chapter in the development of the race, and the 
history of civilization. 

Then with respect to aesthetic knowledge and 
discipline, we have happily in the English lan- 
guage one of the most magnificent storehouses of 
artistic beauty and of models of literary excellence 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 159 

which exists in the world at the present time. I 
have said before, and I repeat it here, that if a 
man cannot get literary culture of the highest 
kind out of his Bible, and Chaucer, and Shake- 
speare, and Milton, and Hobbes, and Bishop 
Berkeley, to mention only a few of our illustrious 
writers I say, if he cannot get it out of those 
writers, he cannot get it out of anything; and I 
would assuredly devote a very large portion of 
the time of every English child to the careful study 
of the models of English writing of such varied 
and wonderful kind as we possess, and, what is still 
more important and still more neglected, the habit 
of using that language with precision, with force, 
and with art. I fancy we are almost the only 
nation in the world who seem to think that com- 
position comes by nature. The French attend to 
their own language, the Germans study theirs ; but 
Englishmen do not seem to think it is worth their 
while. Nor would I fail to include, in the course 
of study I am sketching, translations of all the 
best works of antiquity, or of the modern world. 
It is a very desirable thing to read Homer in 
Greek; but if you don't happen to know Greek, 
the next best thing we can do is to read as good 
a translation of it as we have recently been fur- 
nished with in prose. You won't get all you would 
get from the original, but you may get a great 
deal ; and to refuse to know this great deal be- 



160 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

cause you cannot get all, seems to be as sensible 
as for a hungry man to refuse bread because he 
cannot get partridge. Finally, I would add in- 
struction in either music or painting, or, if the 
child should be so unhappy, as sometimes hap- 
pens, as to have no faculty for either of those, 
and no possibility of doing anything in any artistic 
sense with them, then I would see what could be 
done with literature alone ; but I would provide, in 
the fullest sense, for the development of the ses- 
thetic side of the mind. In my judgment, those 
are all the essentials of education for an English 
child. With that outfit, such as it might be made 
in the time given to education which is within the 
reach of nine-tenths of the population with that 
outfit, an Englishman, within the limits of Eng- 
lish life, is fitted to go anywhere, to occupy the 
highest positions, to fill the highest offices of the 
State, and to become distinguished in practical 
pursuits, in science, or in art. For, if he have 
the opportunity to learn all those things, and have 
his mind disciplined in the various directions the 
teaching of those topics would have necessitated, 
then, assuredly, he will be able to pick up, on his 
road through life, all the rest of the intellectual 
baggage he wants. 

If the educational time at our disposition were 
sufficient, there are one or two things I would add 
to those I have just now called the essentials; and 



SCIENCE, ART, AND EDUCATION 161 

perhaps you will be surprised to hear, though I 
hope you will not, that I should add, not more 
science, but one, or, if possible, two languages. 
The knowledge of some other language than one's 
own is, in fact, of singular intellectual value. 
Many of the faults and mistakes of the ancient 
philosophers are traceable to the fact that they 
knew no language but their own, and were often 
led into confusing the symbol with the thought 
which it embodied. I think it is Locke who says 
that one-half of the mistakes of philosophers have 
arisen from questions about words ; and one of 
the safest ways of delivering yourself from the 
bondage of words is, to know how ideas look in 
words to which you are not accustomed. That is 
one reason for the study of language ; another 
reason is, that it opens new fields in art and in 
science. Another is the practical value of such 
knowledge ; and yet another is this, that if your 
languages are properly chosen, from the time of 
learning the additional languages you will know 
your own language better than ever you did. So, 
I say, if the time given to education permits, add 
Latin and German. Latin, because it is the key 
to nearly one-half of English and to all the Ro- 
mance languages ; and German, because it is the 
key to almost all the remainder of English, and 
helps you to understand a race from whom most 
of us have sprung, and who have a character and 



162 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

a literature of a fateful force in the history of 
the world, such as probably has been allotted to 
those of no other people, except the Jews, the 
Greeks, and ourselves. Beyond these, the essential 
and the eminently desirable elements of all educa- 
tion, let each man take up his special line the 
historian devote himself to his history, the man 
of science to his science, the man of letters to his 
culture of that kind, and the artist to his special 
pursuit. 

Bacon has prefaced some of his works with no 
more than this: Franciscus Bacon sic cogitavit; l 
let " sic cogitavi " be the epilogue to what I have 
ventured to address to you to-night. 

1 Thus thought Francis Bacon. 



THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE 
COLLEGE-BRED 1 

WILLIAM JAMES 

OF what use is a college training? We who 
have had it seldom hear the question raised we 
might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. 
A certain amount of meditation has brought me 
to this as the pithiest reply which I myself can 
give: The best claim that a college education can 
possibly make on your respect, the best thing it 
can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it 
should help you to know a good man when you 
see him. This is as true of women's as of men's 
colleges ; but that it is neither a joke nor a one- 
sided abstraction I shall now endeavor to show. 

What talk do we commonly hear about the con- 
trast between college education and the education 
which business or technical or professional schools 
confer? The college education is called higher 
because it is supposed to be so general and so dis- 

1 An address delivered before The Association of American 
Alumnae, at Radcliffe College, November 7, 1907. Reprinted, 
through special arrangement, from McClure's Magazine. 
163 



164 WILLIAM JAMES 

interested. At the " schools " you get a relatively 
narrow practical skill, you are told, whereas the 
" colleges " give you the more liberal culture, the 
broader outlook, the historical perspective, the 
philosophic atmosphere, or something which 
phrases of that sort try to express. You are 
made into an efficient instrument for doing a defi- 
nite thing, you hear, at the schools ; but, apart 
from that, you may remain a crude and smoky 
kind of petroleum, incapable of spreading light. 
The universities and colleges, on the other hand, 
although they may leave you less efficient for this 
or that practical task, suffuse your whole men- 
tality with something more important than skill. 
They redeem you, make you well-bred ; they make 
" good company " of you mentally. If they find 
you with a naturally boorish or caddish mind, they 
cannot leave you so, as a technical school may 
leave you. This, at least, is pretended ; this is 
what we hear among college-trained people when 
they compare their education with every other 
sort. Now, exactly how much does this signify? 

It is certajn, to begin with, that the narrowest 
trade or professional training does something more 
for a man than to make a skilful practical tool of 
him it makes him also a judge of other men's 
skill. Whether his trade be pleading at the bar 
or surgery or plastering or plumbing, it develops 
a critical sense in him for that sort of occupation. 



VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 165 

He understands the difference between second-rate 
and first-rate work in his whole branch of indus- 
try; he gets to know a good job in his own line 
as soon as he sees it; and getting to know this in 
his own line, he gets a faint sense of what good 
work may mean anyhow, that may, if circum- 
stances favor, spread into his judgments else- 
where. Sound work, clean work, finished work: 
feeble work, slack work, sham work these words 
express an identical contrast in many different 
departments of activity. In so far forth, then, 
even the humblest manual trade may beget in one 
a certain small degree of power to judge of good 
work generally. 

Now, what is supposed to be the line of us who 
have the higher college training? Is there any 
broader line since our education claims pri- 
marily not to be " narrow " in which we also are 
made good judges between what is first-rate and 
what is second-rate only? What is especially 
taught in the colleges has long been known by the 
name of the " humanities," and these are often 
identified with Greek and Latin. But it is only 
as literatures, not as languages, that Greek and 
Latin have any general humanity-value ; so that 
in a broad sense the humanities mean literature 
primarily, and in a still broader sense, the study 
of masterpieces in almost any field of human en- 
deavor. Literature keeps the primacy ; for it not 



166 WILLIAM JAMES 

only consists of masterpieces, but is largely about 
masterpieces, being little more than an apprecia- 
tive chronicle of human master-strokes, so far as 
it takes the form of criticism and history. You 
can give humanistic value to almost anything by 
teaching it historically. Geology, economics, 
mechanics, are humanities when taught with refer- 
ence to the successive achievements of the geniuses 
to which these sciences owe their being. Not 
taught thus, literature remains grammar, art a 
catalogue, history a list of dates, and natural 
science a sheet of formulas and weights and 
measures. 

The sifting of human creations ! nothing less 
than this is what we ought to mean by the hu- 
manities. Essentially this means biography ; what 
our colleges should teach is, therefore, biograph- 
ical history, that not of politics merely, but of 
anything and everything so far as human efforts 
and conquests are factors that have played their 
part. Studying in this way, we learn what types 
of activity have stood the test of time ; we acquire 
standards of the excellent and durable. All our 
arts and sciences and institutions are but so many 
quests of perfection on the part of men ; and when 
we see how diverse the types of excellence may be, 
how various the tests, how flexible the adaptations, 
we gain a richer sense of what the terms " better " 
and " worse " may signify in general. Our crit- 



VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 167 

ical sensibilities grow both more acute and less 
fanatical. We sympathize with men's mistakes 
even in the act of penetrating them ; we feel the 
pathos of lost causes and misguided epochs even 
while we applaud what overcame them. 

Such words are vague and such ideas are inade- 
quate, but their meaning is unmistakable. What 
the colleges teaching humanities by examples 
which may be special, but which must be typical 
and pregnant should at least try to give us, is 
a general sense of what, under various disguises, 
superiority has always signified and may still sig- 
nify. The feeling for a good human job any- 
where, the admiration of the really admirable, the 
disesteem of what is cheap and trashy and im- 
permanent this is what we call the critical sense, 
the sense for ideal values. It is the better part of 
what men know as wisdom. Some of us are wise 
in this way naturally and by genius ; some of us 
never become so. But to have spent one's youth 
at college, in contact with the choice and rare 
and precious, and yet still to be a blind prig or 
vulgarian, unable to scent out human excellence 
or to divine it amid its accidents, to know it only 
when ticketed and labelled and forced on us by 
others, this indeed should be accounted the very 
calamity and shipwreck of a higher education. 

The sense for human superiority ought, then, 
to be considered our line, as boring subways is 



168 WILLIAM JAMES 

the engineer's line and the surgeon's is appendi- 
citis. Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a 
lasting relish for the better kind of man, a loss 
of appetite for mediocrities, and a disgust for 
cheap jacks. We ought to smell, as it were, the 
difference of quality in men and their proposals 
when we enter the world of affairs about us. Ex- 
pertness in this might well atone for some of our 
awkwardness at accounts, for some of our ig- 
norance of dynamos. The best claim we can make 
for the higher education, the best single phrase 
in which we can tell what it ought to do for us, 
is, then, exactly what I said: it should enable us 
to know a good man when we see him. 

That the phrase is anything but an empty epi- 
gram follows from the fact that if you ask in what 
line it is most important that a democracy like 
ours should have its sons and daughters skilful, 
you see that it is this line more than any other. 
" The people in their wisdom " this is the kind 
of wisdom most needed by the people. Democracy 
is on its trial, and no one knows how it will stand 
the ordeal. Abounding about us are pessimistic 
prophets. Fickleness and violence used to be, but 
are no longer, the vices which they charge to 
democracy. What its critics now affirm is that 
its preferences are inveterately for the inferior. 
So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it 
will be world without end. Vulgarity enthroned 



VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 169 

and institutionalized, elbowing everything su- 
perior from the highway, this, they tell us, is our 
irremediable destiny; and the picture-papers of 
the European continent are already drawing Uncle 
Sam with the hog instead of the eagle for his 
heraldic emblem. The privileged aristocracies of 
the foretime, with all their iniquities, did at least 
preserve some taste for higher human quality and 
honor certain forms of refinement by their endur- 
ing traditions. But when democracy is sovereign, 
its doubters say, nobility will form a sort of in- 
visible church, and sincerity and refinement, 
stripped of honor, precedence, and favor, will have 
to vegetate on sufferance in private corners. They 
will have no general influence. They will be harm- 
less eccentricities. 

Now, who can be absolutely certain that this 
may not be the career of democracy? Nothing 
future is quite secure ; states enough have in- 
wardly rotted; and democracy as a whole may 
undergo self-poisoning. But, on the other hand, 
democracy is a kind of religion, and we are bound 
not to admit its failure. Faiths and Utopias are 
the noblest exercise of human reason, and no one 
with a spark of reason in him will sit down fatal- 
istically before the croaker's picture. The best 
of us are filled with the contrary vision of a democ- 
racy stumbling through every error till its institu- 
tions glow with justice and its customs shine with 



170 WILLIAM JAMES 

beauty. Our better men shall show the way and 
we shall follow them ; so we are brought round 
again to the mission of the higher education in 
helping us to know the better kind of man when- 
ever we see him. 

The notion that a people can run itself and its 
affairs anonymously is now well known to be the 
silliest of absurdities. Mankind does nothing save 
through initiatives on the part of inventors, great 
or small, and imitation by the rest of us these 
are the sole factors active in human progress. 
Individuals of genius show the way, and set the 
patterns, which common people then adopt and 
follow. The rivalry of the patterns is the history 
of the world. Our democratic problem thus is 
statable in ultra-simple terms : Who are the kind 
of men from whom our majorities shall take their 
cue? Whom shall they treat as rightful leaders? 
We and our leaders are the x and the y of the 
equation here ; all other historic circumstances, be 
they economical, political, or intellectual, are only 
the background of occasion on which the living 
drama works itself out between us. 

In this very simple way does the value of our 
educated class define itself: we more than others 
should be able to divine the worthier and better 
leaders. The terms here are monstrously simpli- 
fied, of course, but such a bird's-eye view lets us 
immediately take our bearings. In our democracy, 



VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 171 

where everything else is so shifting, we alumni 
and alumnae of the colleges are the only permanent 
presence that corresponds to the aristocracy in 
older countries. We have continuous traditions, 
as they have; our motto, too, is noblesse oblige; 
and, unljke them, we stand for ideal interests 
solely, for we have no corporate selfishness and 
wield no powers of corruption. We ought to have 
our own class-consciousness. " Les intellectuels " ! 
What prouder club-name could there be than this 
one, used ironically by the party of " red blood," 
the party of every stupid prejudice and passion, 
during the anti-Dreyfus craze, to satirize the 
men in France who still retained some critical sense 
and judgment! * Critical sense, it has to be con- 
fessed, is not an exciting term, hardly a banner 
to carry in processions. Affections for old habit, 
currents of self-interest, and gales of passion are 
the forces that keep the human ship moving; and 
the pressure of the judicious pilot's hand upon 
the tiller is a relatively insignificant energy. But 
the affections, passions, and interest are shifting, 
successive, and distraught; they blow in alterna- 
tion while the pilot's hand is steadfast. He knows 
the compass, and, with all the leeways he is obliged 

1 Alfred Dreyfus, a captain, of Jewish descent, in the 
French army, was in 1894 convicted by a secret military tri- 
bunal of having divulged state secrets to a foreign power. In 
1906 Dreyfus was completely vindicated. 



172 WILLIAM JAMES 

to tack toward, he always makes some headway. 
A small force, if it never lets up, will accumulate 
effects more considerable than those of much 
greater forces if these work inconsistently. The 
ceaseless whisper of the more permanent ide- 
als, the steady tug of truth and justice, give 
them but time, must warp the world in their di- 
rection. 

This bird's-eye view of the general steering 
function of the college-bred amid the driftings of 
democracy ought to help us to a wider vision of 
what our colleges themselves should aim at. If 
we are to be the yeast-cake for democracy's 
dough, if we are to make it rise with culture's 
preferences, we must see to it that culture spreads 
broad sails. We must shake the old double reefs 
out of the canvas into the wind and sunshine, and 
let in every modern subject, sure that any subject 
will prove humanistic, if its setting be kept only 
wide enough. 

Stevenson says somewhere to his reader : " You 
think you are just making this bargain, but you 
are really laying down a link in the policy of 
mankind." Well, your technical school should 
enable you to make your bargain splendidly; but 
your college should show you just the place of 
that kind of bargain a pretty poor place, pos- 
sibly in the whole policy of mankind. That is 
the kind of liberal outlook, of perspective, of at- 



VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 173 

mosphcrc, which should surround every subject 
as a college deals with it. 

We of the colleges must eradicate a curious 
notion which numbers of good people have about 
such ancient seats of learning as Harvard. To 
many ignorant outsiders, that name suggests little 
more than a kind of sterilized conceit and incapac- 
ity for being pleased. In Edith Wyatt's exquisite 
book of Chicago sketches called Every One His Own 
Way, there is a couple who stand for culture in 
the sense of exclusiveness, Richard Elliot and his 
feminine counterpart feeble caricatures of man- 
kind, unable to know any good thing when they 
see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed 
label gives them leave. Possibly this type of cul- 
ture may exist near Cambridge and Boston, there 
may be specimens there, for priggishness is just 
like painter's colic or any other trade-disease. 
But every good college makes its students im- 
mune against this malady, of which the microbe 
haunts the neighborhood-printed pages. It does 
so by its general tone being too hearty for the 
microbe's life. Real culture lives by sympathies 
and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains 
under all misleading wrappings it pounces un- 
erringly upon the human core. If a college, 
through the inferior human influences that have 
grown regnant there, fails to catch the robuster 
tone, its failure is colossal, for its social function 



WILLIAM JAMES 

stops: democracy gives it a wide berth, turns to- 
ward it a deaf ear. 

" Tone," to be sure, is a terribly vague word to 
use, but there is no other, and this whole medita- 
tion is over questions of tone. By their tone are 
all things human either lost or saved. If democ- 
racy is to be saved it must catch the higher, 
healthier tone. If we are to impress it with our 
preferences, we ourselves must use the proper tone, 
which we, in turn, must have caught from our 
own teachers. It all reverts in the end to the 
action of innumerable imitative individuals upon 
each other and to the question of whose tone has 
the highest spreading power. As a class, we col- 
lege graduates should look to it that ours has 
spreading power. It ought to have the highest 
spreading power. 

In our essential function of indicating the better 
men, we now have formidable competitors outside. 
McClure's Magazine, the American Magazine, 
Collier's Weekly and, in its fashion, the World's 
Work, constitute together a real popular uni- 
versity along this very line. It would be a pity 
if any future historian were to have to write words 
like these: "By the middle of the twentieth cen- 
tury the higher institutions of learning had lost 
all influence over public opinion in the United 
States. But the mission of raising the tone of 
democracy, which they had proved themselves so 



VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 175 

lamentably unfitted to exert, was assumed with 
rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordi- 
nary skill and success by a new educational power ; 
and for the clarification of their human sympa- 
thies and elevation of their human preferences, 
the people at large acquired the habit of resorting 
exclusively to the guidance of certain private lit- 
erary adventures, commonly designated in the 
market by the affectionate name of ten-cent maga- 
zines." 

Must not we of the colleges see to it that no 
historian shall ever say anything like this ? Vague 
as the phrase of knowing a good man when you 
see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must 
leave its application, is there any other formula 
that describes so well the result at which our in- 
stitutions ought to aim? If they do that, they do 
the best thing conceivable. If they fail to do it, 
they fail in very deed. It surely is a fine synthetic 
formula. If our faculties and graduates could 
once collectively come to realize it as the great 
underlying purpose toward which they have al- 
ways been more or less obscurely groping, a great 
clearness would be shed over many of their prob- 
lems ; and, as for their influence in the midst of 
our social system, it would embark upon a new 
career of strength. 



ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF 

IMPROVING NATURAL 

KNOWLEDGE x 

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

THIS time two hundred years ago in the begin- 
ning of January, 1666 those of our forefathers 
who inhabited this great and ancient city, took 
breath between the shocks of two fearful calami- 
ties : one not quite past, although its fury had 
abated ; the other to come. 

Within a few yards of the very spot on which 
we are assembled, so the tradition runs, that pain- 
ful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared in 
the latter months of 1664 ; and, though no new 
visitor, smote the people of England, and espe- 
cially of her capital, with a violence unknown be- 
fore, in the course of the following year. The 
hand of a master has pictured what happened 
in those dismal months ; and in that truest of 
fictions, The History of the Plague Year, Defoe 
shows death, with every accompaniment of pain 
and terror, stalking through the narrow streets 

1 An address delivered in St. Martin's Hall, London, Jan- 
uary 7, 1866. 

176 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 177 

of old London, and changing their busy hum into 
a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourn- 
ers of fifty thousand dead ; by the woful denuncia- 
tions and mad prayers of fanatics ; and by the 
madder yells of despairing profligates. 

But, about this time in 1666, the death-rate had 
sunk to nearly its ordinary amount ; a case of 
plague occurred only here and there, and the richer 
citizens who had flown from the pest had re- 
turned to their dwellings. The remnant of the 
people began to toil at the accustomed round of 
duty, or of pleasure; and the stream of city life 
bid fair to flow back along its old bed, with re- 
newed and uninterrupted vigor. 

The newly kindled hope was deceitful. The 
great plague, indeed, returned no more ; but what 
it had done for the Londoners, the great fire, 
which broke out in the autumn of 1666, did for 
London ; and, in September of that year, a heap 
of ashes and the indestructible energy of the peo- 
ple were all that remained of the glory of five- 
sixths of the city within the walls. 

Our forefathers had their own ways of account- 
ing for each of these calamities. They submitted 
to the plague in humility and in penitence, for 
they believed it to be the judgment of God. But, 
towards the fire they were furiously indignant, 
interpreting it as the effect of the malice of man, 



178 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

as the work of the Republicans, or of the Pap- 
ists, according as their prepossessions ran in favor 
of loyalty or of Puritanism. 

It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one 
who, standing where I now stand, in what was 
then a thickly peopled and fashionable part of 
London, should have broached to our ancestors 
the doctrine which I now propound to you that 
all their hypotheses were alike wrong ; that the 
plague was no more, in their sense, Divine judg- 
ment, than the fire was the work of any political, 
or of any religious, sect ; but that they were them- 
selves the authors of both plague and fire, and 
that they must look to themselves to prevent the 
recurrence of calamities, to all appearance so pe- 
culiarly beyond the reach of human control so 
evidently the result of the wrath of God, or of the 
craft and subtlety of an enemy. 

And one may picture to oneself how harmoni- 
ously the holy cursing of the Puritan of that day 
would have chimed in with the unholy cursing and 
the crackling wit of the Rochesters and Sedlcys, 
and with the revilings of the political fanatics, if 
my imaginary plain dealer had gone on to say 
that, if the return of such misfortunes were ever 
rendered impossible, it would not be in virtue of 
the victory of the faith of Laud, 1 or of that of 

1 William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop of Canterbury, an 
ardent opponent of Puritanism. 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 179 

Milton ; and, as little, by the triumph of repub- 
licanism, as by that of monarchy. But that the 
one thing needful for compassing this end was, 
that the people of England should second the ef- 
forts of an insignificant corporation, the establish- 
ment of which, a few years before the epoch of the 
great plague and the great fire, had been as little 
noticed, as they were conspicuous. 

Some twenty years before the outbreak of the 
plague a few calm and thoughtful students banded 
themselves together for the purpose, as they 
phrased it, of " improving natural knowledge." 
The ends they proposed to attain cannot be stated 
more clearly than in the words of one of the found- 
ers of the organisation: 

" Our business was (precluding matters of the- 
ology and state affairs) to discourse and consider 
of philosophical enquiries, and such as related 
thereunto: as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, As- 
tronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, 
Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments ; 
with the state of these studies and their cultiva- 
tion at home and abroad. We then discoursed of 
the circulation of the blood, the valves in the veins, 
the venae lactea?, 1 the lymphatic vessels, the Co- 
pernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and 
new stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape 
1 The lacteal vessels. The term is now obsolete. 



180 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

(as it then appeared) of Saturn, the spots on the 
sun and its turning on its own axis, the inequali- 
ties and selenography of the moon, the several 
phases of Venus and Mercury, the improvement of 
telescopes and grinding of glasses for that pur- 
pose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossi- 
bility of vacuities and nature's abhorrence thereof, 
the Torricellian experiment in quicksilver, the 
descent of heavy bodies and the degree of accelera- 
tion therein, with divers other things of like na- 
ture, some of which were then but new discoveries, 
and others not so generally known and embraced 
as now they are; with other things appertaining 
to what hath been called the New Philosophy, 
which, from the times of Galileo at Florence, and 
Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, 
hath been much cultivated in Italy, France, Ger- 
many, and other parts abroad, as well as with us 
in England." 

The learned Dr. Wallis, writing in 1696, nar- 
rates, in these words, what happened half a cen- 
tury before, or about 1645. The associates met 
at Oxford, in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, who was 
destined to become a bishop ; and subsequently 
coming together in London, they attracted the 
notice of the king. And it is a strange evidence 
of the taste for knowledge which the most obvi- 
ously worthless of the Stuarts shared with his 
father and grandfather, that Charles the Second 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 181 

was not content with saying witty things about 
his philosophers, but did wise things with regard 
to them. For he not only bestowed upon them 
such attention as he could spare from his poodles 
and his mistresses, but, being in his usual state of 
impecuniosity, begged for them of the Duke of 
Ormond ; and, that step being without effect, gave 
them Chelsea College, a charter, and a mace: 
crowning his favors in the best way they could 
be crowned, by burdening them no further with 
royal patronage or state interference. 

Thus it was that the half-dozen young men, 
studious of the " New Philosophy," who met in one 
another's lodgings in Oxford or in London, in the 
middle of the seventeenth century, grew in nu- 
merical and in real strength, until, in its latter 
part, the " Royal Society for the Improvement of 
Natural Knowledge " had already become famous, 
and had acquired a claim upon the veneration of 
Englishmen, which it has ever since retained, as 
the principal focus of scientific activity in our 
islands, and the chief champion of the cause it 
was formed to support. 

It was by the aid of the Royal Society that 
Newton published his Principia. If all the books 
in the world, except the Philosophical Transac- 
tions, were destroyed, it is safe to say that the 
foundations of ph} r sical science would remain un- 
shaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of 



182 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

the last two centuries would be largely, though 
incompletely, recorded. Nor have any signs of 
halting or of decrepitude manifested themselves 
in our own times. As in Dr. Wallis's days, so 
in these, " our business is, precluding theology and 
state affairs, to discourse and consider of philo- 
sophical enquiries." But our " Mathematick " is 
one which Newton would have to go to school to 
learn ; our " Staticks, Mechanicks, Magneticks, 
Chymicks, and Natural Experiments " constitute 
a mass of physical and chemical knowledge, a 
glimpse at which would compensate Galileo for 
the doings of a score of inquisitorial cardinals ; 
our " Physick " and " Anatomy " have embraced 
such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such 
new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not 
unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that 
the eyes of Vesalius 1 and of Harvey might be 
dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown 
out of their grain of mustard seed. 

The fact is perhaps rather too much, than too 
little, forced upon one's notice, nowadays, that 
all this marvellous intellectual growth has a no 
less wonderful expression in practical life; and 
that, in this respect, if in no other, the movement 
symbolized by the progress of the Royal Society 
stands without a parallel in the history of man- 
kind. 

1 A Belgian anatomist (1514-1564). 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 183 

A series of volumes as bulky as the Transac- 
tions of the Royal Society might possibly be filled 
with the subtle speculations of the Schoolmen ; 
not improbably, the obtaining a mastery over the 
products of mediaeval thought might necessitate an 
even greater expenditure of time and of energy 
than the acquirement of the " New Philosophy " ; 
but though such work engrossed the best intellects 
of Europe for a longer time than has elapsed since 
the great fire, its effects were " writ in water," so 
far as our social state is concerned. 

On the other hand, if the noble first President 
of the Royal Society could revisit the upper air 
and once more gladden his eyes with a sight of 
the familiar mace, he would find himself in the 
midst of a material civilization more different from 
that of his day, than that of the seventeenth, was 
from that of the first, century. And if Lord 
Brouncker's native sagacity had not deserted his 
ghost, he would need no long reflection to discover 
that all these great ships, these railways, these 
telegraphs, these factories, these printing-presses, 
without which the whole fabric of modern English 
society would collapse into a mass of stagnant 
and starving pauperism, that all these pillars of 
our State are but the ripples and the bubbles upon 
the surface of that great spiritual stream, the 
springs of which, only, he and his fellows were 
privileged to see; and seeing, to recognize as that 



184 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

which it behoved them above all things to keep 
pure and undefiled. 

It may not be too great a flight of imagination 
to conceive our noble revenant not forgetful of the 
great troubles of his own day, and anxious to 
know how often London had been burned down 
since his time, and how often the plague had car- 
ried off its thousands. He would have to learn 
that, although London contains tenfold the inflam- 
mable matter that it did in 1666 ; though, not con- 
tent with filling our rooms with woodwork and 
light draperies, we must needs lead inflammable 
and explosive gases into every corner of our 
streets and houses, we never allow even a street 
to burn down. And if he asked how this had come 
about, we should have to explain that the improve- 
ment of natural knowledge has furnished us with 
dozens of machines for throwing water upon fires, 
any one of which would have furnished the in- 
genious Mr. Hooke, the first " curator and experi- 
menter " of the Royal Society, with ample ma- 
terials for discourse before half a dozen meetings 
of that body ; and that, to say truth, except for 
the progress of natural knowledge, we should not 
have been able to make even the tools by which 
these machines are constructed. And, further, it 
would be necessary to add, that although severe 
fires sometimes occur and inflict great damage, the 
loss is very generally compensated by societies, 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 185 

the operations of which have been rendered possi- 
ble only by the progress of natural knowledge in 
the direction of mathematics, and the accumula- 
tion of wealth in virtue of other natural knowl- 
edge. 

But the plague? My Lord Brouncker's ob- 
servation would not, I fear, lead him to think that 
Englishmen of the nineteenth century are purer 
in life, or more fervent in religious faith, than the 
generation which could produce a Boyle, 1 an 
Evelyn, 2 and a Milton. He might find the mud 
of society at the bottom, instead of at the top, but 
I fear that the sum total would be as deserving 
of swift judgment as at the time of the Restora- 
tion. And it would be our duty to explain once 
more, and this time not without shame, that we 
have no reason to believe that it is the improve- 
ment of our faith, nor that of our morals, which 
keeps the plague from our city ; but, again, that 
it is the improvement of our natural knowledge. 

We have learned that pestilences will only take 
up their abode among those who have prepared 
unswept and ungarnished residences for them. 
Their cities must have narrow, unwatered streets, 
foul with accumulated garbage. Their houses 
must be ill-drained, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated. 
Their subjects must be ill-washed, ill-fed, ill- 

1 Robert Boyle (1627-1691), renowned chemist and physicist. 

2 John Evelyn (1620-1706), chiefly notable for his Diary. 



186 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

clothed. The London of 1665 was such a city. 
The cities of the East, where plague has an en- 
during dwelling, are such cities. We, in later 
times, have learned somewhat of Nature, and 
partly obey her. Because of this partial improve- 
ment of our natural knowledge and of that frac- 
tional obedience, we have no plague ; because that 
knowledge is still very imperfect and that obedi- 
ence yet incomplete, typhus is our companion and 
cholera our visitor. But it is not presumptuous 
to express the belief that, when our knowledge is 
more complete and our obedience the expression 
of our knowledge, London will count her centuries 
of freedom from typhus and cholera, as she now 
gratefully reckons her two hundred years of ig- 
norance of that plague which swooped upon her 
thrice in the first half of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. 

Surely, there is nothing in these explanations 
which is not fully borne out by the facts ? Surely, 
the principles involved in them are now admitted 
among the fixed beliefs of all thinking men? 
Surely, it is true that our countrymen are less 
subject to fire, famine, pestilence, and all the evils 
which result from a want of command over and 
due anticipation of the course of Nature, than were 
the countrymen of Milton ; and health, wealth, and 
well-being are more abundant with us than with 
them? But no less certainly is the difference due 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 187 

to the improvement of our knowledge of Nature, 
and the extent to which that improved knowledge 
has been incorporated with the household words 
of men, and has supplied the springs of their daily 
actions. 

Granting for a moment, then, the truth of that 
which the depreciators of natural knowledge are 
so fond of urging, that its improvement can only 
add to the resources of our material civilization ; 
admitting it to be possible that the founders of 
the Royal Society themselves looked for no other 
reward than this, I cannot confess that I was 
guilty of exaggeration when I hinted, that to him 
who had the gift of distinguishing between prom- 
inent events and important events, the origin of 
a combined effort on the part of mankind to im- 
prove natural knowledge might have loomed larger 
than the Plague and have outshone the glare of 
the Fire ; as a something fraught with a wealth of 
beneficence to mankind, in comparison with which 
the damage done by those ghastly evils would 
shrink into insignificance. 

It is very certain that for every victim slain by 
the plague, hundreds of mankind exist and find 
a fair share of happiness in the world, by the aid 
of the spinning jenny. And the great fire, at its 
worst, could not have burned the supply of coal, 
the daily working of which, in the bowels of the 
earth, made possible by the steam pump, gives rise 



188 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

to an amount of wealth to which the millions lost in 
old London are but as an old song. 

But spinning jenny and steam pump are, after 
all, but toys, possessing an accidental value ; and 
natural knowledge creates multitudes of more sub- 
tle contrivances, the praises of which do not hap- 
pen to be sung because they are not directly 
convertible into instruments for creating wealth. 
When I contemplate natural knowledge squander- 
ing such gifts among men, the only appropriate 
comparison I can find for her is, to liken her to 
such a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, 
striding ever upward, heavily burdened, and with 
mind bent only on her home; but yet, without 
effort and without thought, knitting for her chil- 
dren. Now stockings are good and comfortable 
things, and the children will undoubtedly be much 
the better for them ; but surely it would be short- 
sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this 
toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine a mere 
provider of physical comforts? 

However, there are blind leaders of the blind, 
and not a few of them, who take this view of nat- 
ural knowledge, and can see nothing in the bounti- 
ful mother of humanity but a sort of comfort- 
grinding machine. According to them, the im- 
provement of natural knowledge always has been, 
and always must be, synonymous with no more 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 189 

than the improvement of the material resources 
and the increase of the gratifications of men. 

Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real 
mother of mankind, bringing them up with kind- 
ness, and, if need be, with sternness, in the way 
they should go, and instructing them in all things 
needful for their welfare ; but a sort of fairy god- 
mother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes of 
swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent 
Aladdin's lamps, so that they may have telegraphs 
to Saturn, and see the other side of the moon, 
and thank God they are better than their be- 
nighted ancestors. 

If this talk were true, I, for one, should not 
greatly care to toil in the service of natural knowl- 
edge. I think I would just as soon be quietly 
chipping my own flint axe, after the manner of 
my forefathers a few thousand years back, as be 
troubled with the endless malady of thought which 
now infests us all, for such reward. But I venture 
to say that such views are contrary alike to reason 
and to fact. Those who discourse in such fashion 
seem to me to be so intent upon trying to see 
what is above Nature, or what is behind her, that 
they are blind to what stares them in the face, in 
her. 

I should not venture to speak thus strongly if 
my justification were not to be found in the sim- 
plest and most obvious facts, if it needed more 



190 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

than an appeal to the most notorious truths to 
justify my assertion, that the improvement of nat- 
ural knowledge, whatever direction it has taken, 
and however low the aims of those who may have 
commenced it has not only conferred practical 
benefits on men, but, in so doing, has effected a 
revolution in their conceptions of the universe and 
of themselves, and has profoundly altered their 
modes of thinking and their views of right and 
wrong. I say that natural knowledge, seeking to 
satisfy natural wants, has found the ideas which 
can alone still spiritual cravings. I say that nat- 
ural knowledge, in desiring to ascertain the laws 
of comfort, has been driven to discover those of 
conduct, and to lay the foundations of a new 
morality. 

Let us take these points separately ; and, first, 
what great ideas has natural knowledge introduced 
into men's minds? 

I cannot but think that the foundations of all 
natural knowledge were laid when the reason of 
man first came face to face with the facts of Na- 
ture : when the savage first learned that the fingers 
of one hand are fewer than those of both; that it 
is shorter to cross a stream than to head it ; that 
a stone stops where it is unless it be moved, and 
that it drops from the hand which lets it go ; that 
light and heat come and go with the sun; that 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 191 

sticks burn away in a fire ; that plants and animals 
grow and die ; that if he struck his fellow-savage 
a blow he would make him angry, and perhaps get 
a blow in return, while if he offered him a fruit 
he would please him, and perhaps receive a fish in 
exchange. When men had acquired this much 
knowledge, the outlines, rude though they were, 
of mathematics, of physics, of chemistry, of biol- 
ogy, of moral, economical, and political science, 
were sketched. Nor did the germ of religion fail 
when science began to bud. Listen to words which, 
though new, are yet three thousand years old : 

.... When in heaven the stars about the moon 
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, 
And every height comes out, and jutting peak 
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens 
Break open to their highest, and all the stars 
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart. 1 

If the half-savage Greek could share our feelings 
thus far, it is irrational to doubt that he went 
further, to find, as we do, that upon that brief 
gladness there follows a certain sorrow, the little 
light of awakened human intelligence shines so 
mere a spark amidst the abyss of the unknown 
and unknowable ; seems so insufficient to do more 
than illuminate the imperfections that cannot be 

1 Need it be said that this is Tennyson's English for Ho- 
mer's Greek ? [Author's note.] 



192 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

remedied, the aspirations that cannot be realized, 
of man's own nature. But in this sadness, this con- 
sciousness of the limitation of man, this sense of 
an open secret which he cannot penetrate, lies the 
essence of all religion ; and the attempt to embody 
it in the forms furnished by the intellect is the 
origin of the higher theologies. 

Thus it seems impossible to imagine but that the 
foundations of all knowledge secular or sacred 
were laid when intelligence dawned, though the 
superstructure remained for long ages so slight 
and feeble as to be compatible with the existence 
of almost any general view respecting the mode of 
governance of the universe. No doubt, from the 
first, there were certain phenomena which, to the 
rudest mind, presented a constancy of occurrence, 
and suggested that a fixed order ruled, at any rate, 
among them. I doubt if the grossest of Fetish 
worshippers ever imagined that a stone must have 
a god within it to make it fall, or that a fruit had 
a god within it to make it taste sweet. With re- 
gard to such matters as these, it is hardly ques- 
tionable that mankind from the first took strictly 
positive and scientific views. 

But, with respect to all the less familiar oc- 
currences which present themselves, uncultured 
man, no doubt, has always taken himself as the 
standard of comparison, as the centre and meas- 
ure of the world ; nor could he well avoid doing so. 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 193 

And finding that his apparently uncaused will has 
a powerful effect in giving rise to many occur- 
rences, he naturally enough ascribed other and 
greater events to other and greater volitions, and 
came to look upon the world and all that therein 
is, as the product of the volitions of persons like 
himself, but stronger, and capable of being ap- 
peased or angered, as he himself might be soothed 
or irritated. Through such conceptions of the 
plan and working of the universe all mankind have 
passed, or are passing. And we may now con- 
sider, what has been the effect of the improvement 
of natural knowledge on the views of men who have 
reached this stage, and who have begun to culti- 
vate natural knowledge with no desire but that of 
" increasing God's honor and bettering man's es- 
tate." 

For example: what could seem wiser, from a 
mere material point of view, more innocent, from 
a theological one, to an ancient people, than that 
they should learn the exact succession of the sea- 
sons, as warnings for their husbandmen; or the 
position of the stars, as guides to their rude navi- 
gators? But what has grown out of this search 
for natural knowledge of so merely useful a char- 
acter? You all know the reply. Astronomy, 
which of all sciences has filled men's minds with 
general ideas of a character most foreign to their 
daily experience, and has, more than any other, 



THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

rendered it impossible for them to accept the be- 
liefs of their fathers. Astronomy, which tells 
them that this so vast and seemingly solid earth 
is but an atom among atoms, whirling, no man 
knows whither, through illimitable space; which 
demonstrates that what we call the peaceful 
heaven above us, is but that space, filled by an 
infinitely subtle matter whose particles are seeth- 
ing and surging, like the waves of an angry sea; 
which opens up to us infinite regions where nothing 
is known, or ever seems to have been known, but 
matter and force, operating according to rigid 
rules ; which leads us to contemplate phenomena 
the very nature of which demonstrates that they 
must have had a beginning, and that they must 
have an end, but the very nature of which also 
proves that the beginning was, to our conceptions 
of time, infinitely remote, and that the end is as 
immeasurably distant. 

But it is not alone those who pursue astronomy 
who ask for bread and receive ideas. What more 
harmless than the attempt to lift and distribute 
water by pumping it ; what more absolutely and 
grossly utilitarian? But out of pumps grew the 
discussions about Nature's abhorrence of a vac- 
uum ; and then it was discovered that Nature does 
not abhor a vacuum, but that air has weight ; and 
that notion paved the way for the doctrine that 
all matter has weight, and that the force which 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 195 

produces weight is co-extensive with the universe, 
in short, to the theory of universal gravitation 
and endless force. While learning how to handle 
gases led to the discovery of oxygen, and to 
modern chemistry, and to the notion of the inde- 
structibility of matter. 

Again, what simpler, or more absolutely prac- 
tical, than the attempt to keep the axle of a wheel 
from heating when the wheel turns round very 
fast? How useful for carters and gig drivers to 
know something about this ; and how good were 
it, if any ingenious person would find out the cause 
of such phenomena, and thence educe a general 
remedy for them. Such an ingenious person was 
Count Rumford ; a and he and his successors have 
landed us in the theory of the persistence, or in- 
destructibility, of force. And in the infinitely 
minute, as in the infinitely great, the seekers after 
natural knowledge, of the kinds called physical and 
chemical, have everywhere found a definite order 
and succession of events which seem never to be 
infringed. 

And how has it fared with " Physick " and 
anatomy? Have the anatomist, the physiologist, 
or the physician, whose business it has been to 
devote themselves assiduously to that eminently 
practical and direct end, the alleviation of the 

1 Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814), a distinguished American 
scientist. 



196 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

sufferings of mankind, have they been able to 
confine their vision more absolutely to the strictly 
useful? I fear they are worst offenders of 
all. For if the astronomer has set before us the 
infinite magnitude of space, and the practical 
eternity of the duration of the universe; if the 
physical and chemical philosophers have demon- 
strated the infinite minuteness of its constituent 
parts, and the practical eternity of matter and of 
force; and if both have alike proclaimed the uni- 
versality of a definite and predicable order and 
succession of events, the workers in biology have 
not only accepted all these, but have added more 
startling theses of their own. For, as the astron- 
omers discover in the earth no centre of the uni- 
verse, but an eccentric speck, so the naturalists 
find man to be no centre of the living world, but 
one amidst endless modifications of life ; and as 
the astronomer observes the mark of practically 
endless time set upon the arrangements of the 
solar system so the student of life finds the records 
of ancient forms of existence peopling the world 
for ages, which, in relation to human experience, 
are infinite. 

Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be 
as dependent for its manifestation on particular 
molecular arrangements as any physical or chem- 
ical phenomenon ; and, wherever he extends his re- 
searches, fixed order and unchanging causation 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 197 

reveal themselves, as plainly as in the rest of 
Nature. 

Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited 
the germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds 
of knowledge, out of the action and interaction 
of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, 
it has taken the intellectual coverings of fetish- 
ism or polytheism; of theism or atheism; of su- 
perstition or rationalism. With these, and their 
relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to 
do ; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, 
that if the religion of the present differs from 
that of the past, it is because the theology of the 
present has become more scientific than that of 
the past ; because it has not only renounced idols 
of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the 
necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up 
of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical 
cobwebs : and of cherishing the noblest and most 
human of man's emotions, by worship " for the 
most part of the silent sort " at the altar of the 
Unknown and Unknowable. 1 

Such are a few of the new conceptions implanted 
in our minds by the improvement of natural knowl- 
edge. Men have acquired the ideas of the prac- 
tically infinite extent of the universe and of its 
practical eternity ; they are familiar with the con- 
ception that our earth is but an infinitesimal frag- 
1 An allusion to Acts xvii. 23. 



198 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

ment of that part of the universe which -can be 
seen ; and that, nevertheless, its duration is, as 
compared with our standards of time, infinite. 
They have further acquired the idea that man is 
but one of innumerable forms of life now existing 
in the globe, and that the present existences are 
but the last of an immeasurable series of prede- 
cessors. Moreover, every step they have made in 
natural knowledge has tended to extend and rivet 
in their minds the conception of a definite order 
of the universe which is embodied in what are 
called, by an unhappy metaphor, the laws of Na- 
ture and to narrow the range and loosen the 
force of men's belief in spontaneity, or in changes 
other than such as arise out of that definite order 
itself. 

Whether these ideas are well or ill founded is 
not the question. No one can deny that they 
exist, and have been the inevitable outgrowth of 
the improvement of natural knowledge. And if 
so, it cannot be doubted that they arc changing 
the form of men's most cherished and most impor- 
tant convictions. 

And as regards the second point the extent to 
which the improvement of natural knowledge has 
remodelled and altered what may be termed the 
intellectual ethics of men, what are among the 



NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 199 

moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous 
and semi-barbarous people? 

They are the convictions that authority is the 
soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to a 
readiness to believe ; that the doubting disposition 
is a bad one, and scepticism a sin ; that when good 
authority has pronounced what is to be believed, 
and faith has accepted it, reason has no further 
duty. There are many excellent persons who yet 
hold by these principles, and it is not my present 
business, or intention, to discuss their views. All 
I wish to bring clearly before your minds is the 
unquestionable fact, that the improvement of nat- 
ural knowledge is effected by methods which di- 
rectly give the lie to all these convictions, and 
assume the exact reverse of each to be true. 

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely 
refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For 
him, scepticism is the highest of duties ; blind faith 
the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be other- 
wise, for every great advance in natural knowl- 
edge has involved the absolute rejection of author- 
ity, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the 
annihilation of the spirit of blind faith ; and the 
most ardent votary of science holds his firmest 
convictions, not because the men he most venerates 
hold them ; not because their verity is testified by 
portents and wonders ; but because his experience 
teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring 



200 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

these convictions into contact with their primary 
source, Nature whenever he thinks fit to test 
them by appealing to experiment and to observa- 
tion Nature will confirm them. The man of 
science has learned to believe in justification, not 
by faith, but by verification. 

Thus, without for a moment pretending to de- 
spise the practical results of the improvement of 
natural knowledge, and its beneficial influence on 
material civilization, it must, I think, be admitted 
that the great ideas, some of which I have indi- 
cated, and the ethical spirit which I have endeav- 
ored to sketch, in the few moments which remained 
at my disposal, constitute the real and permanent 
significance of natural knowledge. 

If these ideas be destined, as I believe they are, 
to be more and more firmly established as the 
world grows older; if that spirit be fated, as I 
believe it is, to extend itself into all departments 
of human thought, and to become co-extensive with 
the range of knowledge ; if, as our race approaches 
its maturity, it discovers, as I believe it will, that 
there is but one kind of knowledge and but one 
method of acquiring it ; then we, who arc still chil- 
dren, may justly feel it our highest duty to recog- 
nize the advisableness of improving natural knowl- 
edge, and so to aid ourselves and our successors 
in their course towards the noble goal which lies 
before mankind. 



ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE 

OF THE NATURAL HISTORY 

SCIENCES x 

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

THE subject to which I have to beg your atten- 
tion during the ensuing hour is " The Relation of 
Physiological Science to Other Branches of 
Knowledge." 

Had circumstances permitted of the delivery, in 
their strict logical order, of that series of dis- 
courses of which the present lecture is a member, 
I should have preceded my friend and colleague 
Mr. Henfrey, who addressed you on Monday last ; 
but while, for the sake of that order, I must beg 
you to suppose that this discussion of the educa- 
tional bearings of biology in general does precede 
that of special zoology and botany, I am rejoiced 
to be able to take advantage of the light thus 
already thrown upon the tendency and methods of 
physiological science. 

Regarding physiological science, then, in its 
widest sense as the equivalent of biology the 

1 An address delivered in St. Martin's Hall, London, July 
22, 1854. 

201 



202 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

science of individual life we have to consider in 
succession: 

1. Its position and scope as a branch of knowl- 
edge. 

2. Its value as a means of mental discipline. 

3. Its worth as practical information. 
And lastly, 

4. At what period it may best be made a branch 
of education. 

Our conclusions on the first of these heads must 
depend, of course, upon the nature of the subject- 
matter of biology ; and I think a few preliminary 
considerations will place before you in a clear light 
the vast difference which exists between the living 
bodies with which physiological science is con- 
cerned, and the remainder of the universe ; be- 
tween the phenomena of number and space, of 
physical and of chemical force, on the one hand, 
and those of Life on the other. 

The mathematician, the physicist, and the chem- 
ist contemplate things in a condition of rest ; they 
look upon a state of equilibrium as that to which 
all bodies normally tend. 

The mathematician does not suppose that a 
quantity will alter, or that a given point in space 
will change its direction with regard to another 
point, spontaneously. And it is the same with the 
physicist. When Newton saw the apple fall, he 
concluded at once that the act of falling was not 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 203 

the result of any power inherent in the apple, but 
that it was the result of the action of something 
else on the apple. In a similar manner, all phys- 
ical force is regarded as the disturbance of an 
equilibrium to which things tended before its exer- 
tion, to which they will tend again after its 
cessation. 

The chemist equally regards chemical change in 
a body, as the effect of the action of something 
external to the body changed. A chemical com- 
pound once formed would persist for ever, if no 
alteration took place in surrounding conditions. 

But to the student of Life the aspect of Nature 
is reversed. Here, incessant, and, so far as we 
know, spontaneous change is the rule, rest the 
exception the anomaly to be accounted for. 
Living things have no inertia, and tend to no 
equilibrium. 

Permit me, however, to give more force and 
clearness to these somewhat abstract considera- 
tions, by an illustration or two. 

Imagine a vessel full of water, at the ordinary 
temperature, in an atmosphere saturated with 
vapor. The quantity and the figure of that 
water will not change, so far as we know, for ever. 

Suppose a lump of gold be thrown into the 
vessel motion and disturbance of figure exactly 
proportional to the momentum of the gold will 
take place. But after a time the effects of this 



THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

disturbance will subside equilibrium will be re- 
stored, and the water will return to its passive 
state. 

Expose the water to cold it will solidify and 
in so doing its particles will arrange themselves 
in definite crystalline shapes. But once formed, 
these crystals change no further. 

Again, substitute for the lump of gold some 
substance capable of entering into chemical rela- 
tions with the water, say, a mass of that sub- 
stance which is called " protein," the substance of 
flesh, a very considerable disturbance of equilib- 
rium will take place all sorts of chemical com- 
positions and decompositions will occur; but in 
the end, as before, the result will be the resump- 
tion of a condition of rest. 

Instead of such a mass of dead protein, how- 
ever, take a particle of living protein one of 
those minute microscopic living things which 
throng our pools, and are known as Infusoria 
such a creature, for instance, as an Euglena, and 
place it in our vessel of water. It is a round mass 
provided with a long filament, and except in this 
peculiarity of shape, presents no appreciable 
physical or chemical difference whereby it might 
be distinguished from the particle of dead protein. 

But the difference in the phenomena to which 
it will give rise is immense: in the first place it 
will develop a vast quantity of physical force 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 205 

cleaving the water in all directions with considera- 
ble rapidity by means of the vibrations of the 
long filament or cilium. 

Nor is the amount of chemical energy which 
the little creature possesses less striking. It is 
a perfect laboratory in itself, and it will act and 
react upon the water and the matters contained 
therein ; converting them into new compounds re- 
sembling its own substance, and at the same time 
giving up portions of its own substance which 
have become effete. 

Furthermore, the Euglena will increase in size; 
but this increase is by no means unlimited, as the 
increase of a crystal might be. After it has 
grown to a certain extent it divides, and each 
portion assumes the form of the original, and pro- 
ceeds to repeat the process of growth and division. 

Nor is this all. For after a series of such 
divisions and subdivisions, these minute points as- 
sume a totally new form, lose their long tails 
round themselves, and secrete a sort of envelope 
or box, in which they remain shut up for a time, 
eventually to resume, directly or indirectly, their 
primitive mode of existence. 

Now, so far as we know, there is no natural 
limit to the existence of the Euglena, or of any 
other living germ. A living species once launched 
into existence tends to live for ever. 

Consider how widely different this living particle 



206 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

is from the dead atoms with which the physicist 
and chemist have to do ! 

The particle of gold falls to the bottom and 
rests ; the particle of dead protein decomposes 
and disappears it also rests: but the living 
protein mass neither tends to exhaustion of its 
forces nor to any permanency of form, but is 
essentially distinguished as a disturber of equilib- 
rium so far as force is concerned, as undergoing 
continual metamorphosis and change, in point of 
form. 

Tendency to equilibrium of force and to perma- 
nency of form, then, are the characters of that 
portion of the universe which does not live the 
domain of the chemist and physicist. 

Tendency to disturb existing equilibrium to 
take on forms which succeed one another in definite 
cycles is the character of the living world. 

What is the cause of this wonderful difference 
between the dead particle and the living particle 
of matter appearing in other respects identical? 
that difference to which we give the name of Life? 

I, for one, cannot tell you. It may be that, by 
and by, philosophers will discover some higher 
laws of which the facts of life are particular cases 
very possibly they will find out some bond be- 
tween physico-chemical phenomena on the one 
hand, and vital phenomena on the other. At pres- 
ent, however, we assuredly know of none ; and I 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 207 

think we shall exercise a wise humility in confess- 
ing that, for us at least, this successive assump- 
tion of different states (external conditions re- 
maining the same) this spontaneity of action if 
I may use a term which implies more than I would 
be answerable for which constitutes so vast and 
plain a practical distinction between living bodies 
and those which do not live, is an ultimate fact ; 
indicating as such, the existence of a broad line 
of demarcation between the subject-matter of bio- 
logical and that of all other sciences. 

For I would have it understood that this simple 
Euglena is the type of all living things, so far as 
the distinction between these and inert matter is 
concerned. That cycle of changes, which is con- 
stituted by perhaps not more than two or three 
steps in the Euglena, is as clearly manifested in 
the multitudinous stages through which the germ 
of an oak or of a man passes. Whatever forms 
the Living Being may take on, whether simple or 
complex, production, growth, reproduction, are 
the phenomena which distinguish it from that 
which does not live. 

If this be true, it is clear that the student, in 
passing from the physico-chemical to the physio- 
logical sciences, enters upon a totally new order 
of facts ; and it will next be for us to consider how 
far these new facts involve new methods, or re- 
quire a modification of those with which he is 



208 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

already acquainted. Now a great deal is said 
about the peculiarity of the scientific method in 
general, and of the different methods which are 
pursued in the different sciences. The mathemat- 
ics are said to have one special method ; physics 
another, biology a third, and so forth. For my 
own part, I must confess that I do not understand 
this phraseology. 

So far as I can arrive at any clear compre- 
hension of the matter, Science is not, as many 
would seem to suppose, a modification of the black 
art, suited to the tastes of the nineteenth century, 
and flourishing mainly in consequence of the decay 
of the Inquisition. 

Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and 
organized common sense, differing from the latter 
only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit : 
and its methods differ from those of common sense 
only so far as the guardsman's cut and thrust 
differ from the manner in which a savage wields his 
club. The primary power is the same in each 
case, and perhaps the untutored savage has the 
more brawny arm of the two. The real advantage 
lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's 
weapon ; in the trained eye quick to spy out the 
weakness of the adversary ; in the ready hand 
prompt to follow it on the instant. But, after all, 
the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking 
of the clubman developed and perfected. 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 209 

So, the vast results obtained by Science are won 
by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes, 
other than those which are practised by every one 
of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. 
A detective policeman discovers a burglar from 
the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process 
identical with that by which Cuvier restored the 
extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of 
their bones. 1 Nor does that process of induction 
and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of 
a peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that 
somebody has upset the inkstand thereon, differ 
in any way, in kind, from that by which Adams 
and Leverrier discovered a new planet. 2 

The man of science, in fact, simply uses with 
scrupulous exactness, the methods which we all, 
habitually and at every moment, use carelessly; 
and the man of business must as much avail him- 
self of the scientific method must be as truly a 
man of science as the veriest bookworm of us 
all ; though I have no doubt that the man of busi- 
ness will find himself out to be a philosopher with 
as much surprise as M. Jourdain exhibited, when 
he discovered that he had been all his life talking 



1 Montmartre, a quarter in the city of Paris. Excavations 
here made brought to light numerous fossils. 

2 John Couch Adams (1819-1892) and Urbain Jean Joseph 
Leverrier (1811-1877), working independently, discovered the 
planet Neptune at about the same time. 



210 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

prose. 1 If, however, there be no real difference 
between the methods of science and those of com- 
mon life, it would seem, on the face of the matter, 
highly improbable that there should be any differ- 
ence between the methods of the different sciences ; 
nevertheless, it is constantly taken for granted, 
that there is a very wide difference between the 
physiological and other sciences in point of 
method. 

In the first place it is said and I take this 
point first, because the imputation is too frequently 
admitted by physiologists themselves that biol- 
ogy differs from the ph}"sico-chemical and math- 
ematical sciences in being " inexact." 

Now, this phrase " inexact " must refer either 
to the methods or to the results of physiological 
science. 

It cannot be correct to apply it to the methods ; 
for, as I hope to show you by and by, these are 
identical in all sciences, and whatever is true of 
physiological method is true of physical and math- 
ematical method. 

Is it then the results of biological science which 
are "inexact"? I think not. If I say that 
respiration is performed by the lungs ; that diges- 
tion is effected in the stomach ; that the eye is the 

1 Monsieur Jourdain is the hero of Moliere's comedy Le 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme. The incident here mentioned has 
become proverbial. 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 211 

organ of sight; that the jaws of a vertebrated 
animal never open sideways, but always up and 
down; while those of an annulose animal always 
open sideways, and never up and down I am 
enumerating propositions which are as exact as 
anything in Euclid. How then has this notion 
of the inexactness of biological science come about? 
I believe from two causes : first, because, in con- 
sequence of the great complexity of the science 
and the multitude of interfering conditions, we 
are very often only enabled to predict approx- 
imately what will occur under given circumstances ; 
and secondly, because, on account of the compara- 
tive youth of the physiological sciences, a great 
many of their laws are still imperfectly worked 
out. But, in an educational point of view, it is 
most important to distinguish between the essence 
of a science and the accidents which surround it ; 
and essentially, the methods and results of physi- 
ology are as exact as those of physics or mathe- 
matics. 

It is said that the physiological method is espe- 
cially comparative; and this dictum also finds 
favor in the eyes of many. I should be sorry to 
suggest that the speculators on scientific classi- 
fication have been misled by the accident of the 
name of one leading branch of biology compara- 
tive anatomy; but I would ask whether com- 
parison, and that classification which is the result 



212 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

of comparison, are not the essence of every science 
whatsoever? How is it possible to discover a rela- 
tion of cause and effect of any kind without com- 
paring a series of cases together in which the sup- 
posed cause and effect occur singly, or combined? 
So far from comparison being in any way peculiar 
to biological science, it is, I think, the essence of 
every science. 

A speculative philosopher 1 again tells us that 
the biological sciences are distinguished by being 
sciences of observation and not of experiment ! 

Of all the strange assertions into which specula- 
tion without practical acquaintance with a subject 
may lead even an able man, I think this is the very 
strangest. Physiology not an experimental sci- 
ence! Why, there is not a function of a single 
organ in the body which has not been determined 
wholly and solely by experiment. How did Harvey 
determine the nature of the circulation, except by 
experiment? How did Sir Charles Bell determine 
the functions of the roots of the spinal nerves, 
save by experiment? How do we know the use of 
a nerve at all, except by experiment? Nay, how 
do you know even that your eye is your seeing 
apparatus, unless you make the experiment of 
shutting it ; or that your ear is your hearing ap- 
paratus, unless you close it up and thereby dis- 
cover that you become deaf? 

1 Auguste Comte (1798-1857), a French philosopher. 



It would really be much more true to say that 
physiology is the experimental science par excel- 
lence of all sciences; that in which there is least 
to be learnt by mere observation, and that which 
affords the greatest field for the exercise of those 
faculties which characterize the experimental 
philosopher. I confess, if any one were to ask me 
for a model application of the logic of experiment, 
I should know no better work to put into his 
hands than Bernard's late Researches on the 
Functions of the Liver* 

Not to give this lecture a too controversial tone, 
however, I must only advert to one more doctrine, 
held by a thinker of our own age and country, 2 
whose opinions are worthy of all respect. It is, 
that the biological sciences differ from all others, 
inasmuch as in them classification takes place by 
type and not by definition. 

It is said, in short, that a natural-history class 
is not capable of being defined that the class 
Rosacese, for instance, or the class of Fishes, is 
not accurately and absolutely definable, inasmuch 
as its members will present exceptions to every 
possible definition ; and that the members of the 
class are united together only by the circumstance 
that they are all more like some imaginary average 

1 Claude Bernard (1813-1878), a French physiologist. 

2 William Whewell (1794-1866), an English philosopher and 
scholar. 



THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

rose or average fish, than they resemble anything 
else. 

But here, as before, I think the distinction has 
arisen entirely from confusing a transitory imper- 
fection with an essential character. So long as 
our information concerning them is imperfect, we 
class all objects together according to resem- 
blances which we feel, but cannot define; we group 
them round types, in short. Thus, if you ask an 
ordinary person what kinds of animals there are, 
he will probably say beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, 
insects, etc. Ask him to define a beast from a 
reptile, and he cannot do it ; but he says, things 
like a cow or a horse are beasts, and things like 
a frog or a lizard are reptiles. You see lie docs 
class by type, and not by definition. But how 
does this classification differ from that of the 
scientific zoologist? How does the meaning of the 
scientific class-name of " Mammalia " differ from 
the unscientific of " Beasts "? 

Why, exactly because the former depends on a 
definition, the latter on a type. The class Mam- 
malia is scientifically defined as " all animals which 
have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their 
young." Here is no reference to type, but a defi- 
nition rigorous enough for a geometrician. And 
such is the character which every scientific nat- 
uralist recognizes as that to which his classes must 
aspire knowing, as he does, that classification by 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 215 

type is simply an acknowledgment of ignorance 
and a temporary device. 

So much in the way of negative argument as 
against the reputed differences between biological 
and other methods. No such differences, I be- 
lieve, really exist. The subject-matter of bio- 
logical science is different from that of other 
sciences, but the methods of all are identical ; and 
these methods are 

1. Observation of facts including under this 
head that artificial observation which is called ex- 
periment. 

2. That process of tying up similar facts into 
bundles, ticketed and ready for use, which is called 
comparison and classification, the results of the 
process, the ticketed bundles, being named general 
propositions. 

3. Deduction, which takes us from the general 
proposition to facts again teaches us, if I may 
so say, to anticipate from the ticket what is inside 
the bundle. And finally 

4. Verification, which is the process of ascer- 
taining whether, in point of fact, our anticipa- 
tion is a correct one. 

Such are the methods of all science whatsoever ; 
but perhaps you will permit me to give you an 
illustration of their employment in the science of 
Life; and I will take as a special case the estab- 



216 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

lishmcnt of the doctrine of the circulation of the 
blood. 

In this case, simple observation yields us a 
knowledge of the existence of the blood from some 
accidental hemorrhage, we will say: we may even 
grant that it informs us of the localization of this 
blood in particular vessels, the heart, etc., from 
some accidental cut or the like. It teaches also 
the existence of a pulse in various parts of the 
body, and acquaints us with the structure of the 
heart and vessels. 

Here, however, simple observation stops, and we 
must have recourse to experiment. 

You tie a vein, and you find that the blood accu- 
mulates on the side of the ligature opposite the 
heart. You tie an artery, and you find that the 
blood accumulates on the side near the heart. 
Open the chest, and you see the heart contracting 
with great force. Make openings into its prin- 
cipal cavities, and you will find that all the blood 
flows out, and no more pressure is exerted on 
either side of the arterial or venous liga- 
ture. 

Now all these facts, taken together, constitute 
the evidence that the blood is propelled by the 
heart through the arteries, and returns by the 
veins that, in short, the blood circulates. 

Suppose our experiments and observations have 
been made on horses, then we group and ticket 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 217 

them into a general proposition, thus: all horses 
have a circulation of their blood. 

Henceforward a horse is a sort of indication 
or label, telling us where we shall find a peculiar 
series of phenomena called the circulation of the 
blood. 

Here is our general proposition, then. 

How, and when, are we justified in making our 
next step a deduction from it? 

Suppose our physiologist, whose experience is 
limited to horses, meets with a zebra for the first 
time, will he suppose that this generalization 
holds good for zebras also? 

That depends very much on his turn of mind. 
But we will suppose him to be a bold man. He 
will say, " The zebra is certainly not a horse, but 
it is very like one, so like, that it must be the 
* ticket ' or mark of a blood-circulation also ; and 
I conclude that the zebra has a circulation." 

That is a deduction, a very fair deduction, but 
by no means to be considered scientifically secure. 
This last quality, in fact, can only be given by 
verification that is, by making a zebra the sub- 
ject of all the experiments performed on the horse. 
Of course, in the present case, the deduction would 
be confirmed by this process of verification, and 
the result would be, not merely a positive widen- 
ing of knowledge, but a fair increase of confidence 
in the truth of one's generalizations in other cases. 



218 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

Thus, having settled the point in the zebra and 
horse, our philosopher would have great confidence 
in the existence of a circulation in the ass. Nay, 
I fancy most persons would excuse him, if in this 
case he did not take the trouble to go through the 
process of verification at all ; and it would not be 
without a parallel in the history of the human 
mind, if our imaginary physiologist now main- 
tained that he was acquainted with asinine circula- 
tion a priori. 

However, if I might impress any caution upon 
your minds, it is, the utterly conditional nature 
of all our knowledge, the danger of neglecting 
the process of verification under any circum- 
stances ; and the film upon which we rest, the mo- 
ment our deductions carry us beyond the reach of 
this great process of verification. There is no 
better instance of this than is afforded by the his- 
tory of our knowledge of the circulation of the 
blood in the animal kingdom until the year 1824. 
In every animal possessing a circulation at all, 
which had been observed up to that time, the cur- 
rent of the blood was known to take one definite 
and invariable direction. Now, there is a class 
of animals called Ascidians, which possess a heart 
and a circulation, and up to the period of which 
I speak, no one would have dreamt of question- 
ing the propriety of the deduction, that these crea- 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 219 

tures have a circulation in one direction ; nor 
would any one have thought it worth while to 
verify the point. But, in that } T ear, M. von Has- 
selt, happening to examine a transparent animal 
of this class, found, to his infinite surprise, that 
after the heart had beat a certain number of times, 
it stopped, and then began beating the opposite 
way so as to reverse the course of the current, 
which returned by and by to its original direction. 

I have myself timed the heart of these little 
animals. I found it as regular as possible in its 
periods of reversal: and I know no spectacle in 
the animal kingdom more wonderful than that 
which it presents all the more wonderful that 
to this day it remains an unique fact, peculiar 
to this class among the whole animated world. At 
the same time I know of no more striking case of 
the necessity of the verification of even those de- 
ductions which seem founded on the widest and 
safest inductions. 

Such are the methods of biology methods 
which are obviously identical with those of all 
other sciences, and therefore wholly incompetent 
to form the ground of any distinction between it 
and them. 1 

1 Save for the pleasure of doing so, I need hardly point out 
my obligations to Mr. J. S. Mill's System of Logic, in this view 
of scientific method. [Author's note.] 



220 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

But I shall be asked at once, Do you mean to 
say that there is no difference between the habit 
of mind of a mathematician and that of a nat- 
uralist? Do you imagine that Laplace might 
have been put into the Jardin des Plantes, 1 and 
Cuvier into the Observatory, with equal advantage 
to the progress of the sciences they professed? 

To which I would reply, that nothing could be 
further from my thoughts. But different habits 
and various special tendencies of two sciences do 
not imply different methods. The mountaineer 
and the man of the plains have very different 
habits of progression, and each would be at a loss 
in the other's place; but the method of progres- 
sion, by putting one leg before the other, is the 
same in each case. Every step of each is a com- 
bination of a lift and a push; but the moun- 
taineer lifts more and the lowlander pushes more. 
And I think the case of two sciences resembles 
this. 

I do not question for a moment that while the 
mathematician is busied with deductions from gen- 
eral propositions, the biologist is more especially 
occupied with observation, comparison, and those 
processes which lead to general propositions. All 
I wish to insist upon is, that this difference de- 
pends not on any fundamental distinction in the 
sciences themselves, but on the accidents of their 
1 The Botanical Gardens. 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 

subject-matter, of their relative complexity, and 
consequent relative perfection. 

The mathematician deals with two properties 
of objects only, number and extension, and all the 
inductions he wants have been formed and finished 
ages ago. He is occupied now with nothing but 
deduction and verification. 

The biologist deals with a vast number of prop- 
erties of objects, and his inductions will not be 
completed, I fear, for ages to come ; but when they 
are, his science will be as deductive and as exact 
as the mathematics themselves. 

Such is the relation of biology to those sciences 
which deal with objects having fewer properties 
than itself. But as the student, in reaching biol- 
ogy, looks back upon sciences of a less complex 
and therefore more perfect nature ; so, on the other 
hand, does he look forward to other more complex 
and less perfect branches of knowledge. Biology 
deals only with living beings as isolated things 
treats only of the life of the individual : but there 
is a higher division of science still, which considers 
living beings as aggregates which deals with the 
relation of living beings one to another the 
science which observes men whose experiments 
are made by nations one upon another, in battle- 
fields whose general propositions are embodied in 
history, morality, and religion whose deductions 



222 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

lead to our happiness or our misery, and whose 
verifications so often come too late, and serve only 

To point a moral or adorn a tale 

I mean the science of Society or Sociology. 

I think it is one of the grandest features of 
biology that it occupies this central position in 
human knowledge. There is no side of the human 
mind which physiological study leaves unculti- 
vated. Connected by innumerable ties with ab- 
stract science, physiology is yet in the most inti- 
mate relation with humanity ; and by teaching us 
that law and order, and a definite scheme of de- 
velopment, regulate even the strangest and wild- 
est manifestations of individual life, she prepares 
the student to look for a goal even amidst the 
erratic wanderings of mankind, and to believe that 
history offers something more than an entertain- 
ing chaos a journal of a toilsome, tragi-comic 
march now r hither. 

The preceding considerations have, I hope, 
served to indicate the replies which befit the two 
first of the questions which I set before you at 
starting, viz., What is the range and position of 
physiological science as a branch of knowledge? 
and What is its value as a means of mental dis- 
cipline ? 

Its subject-matter is a large moiety of the uni- 
verse its position is midway between the physico- 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 223 

chemical and the social sciences. Its value as a 
branch of discipline is partly that which it has 
in common with all sciences the training and 
strengthening of common sense ; partly that which 
is more peculiar to itself the great exercise which 
it affords to the faculties of observation and com- 
parison; and I may add, the exactness of knowl- 
edge which it requires on the part of those among 
its votaries who desire to extend its boundaries. 

If what has been said as to the position and 
scope of biology be correct, our third question 
What is the practical value of physiological in- 
struction? might, one would think, be left to 
answer itself. 

On other grounds even, were mankind deserving 
of the title " rational," which they arrogate to 
themselves, there can be no question that they 
would consider, as the most necessary of all 
branches of instruction for themselves and for 
their children, that which professes to acquaint 
them with the conditions of the existence they 
prize so highly which teaches them how to avoid 
disease and to cherish health, in themselves and 
those who are dear to them. 

I am addressing, I imagine, an audience of edu- 
cated persons ; and yet I dare venture to assert 
that, with the exception of those of my hearers 
who may chance to have received a medical edu- 
cation, there is not one who could tell me what 



THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

is the meaning and use of an act which he per- 
forms a score of times every minute, and whose 
suspension would involve his immediate death, I 
mean the act of breathing, or who could state in 
precise terms why it is that a confined atmosphere 
is injurious to health. 

The practical value of physiological knowledge ! 
Why is it that educated men can be found to 
maintain that a slaughter-house in the midst of 
a great city is rather a good thing than other- 
wise? that mothers persist in exposing the 
largest possible amount of surface of their children 
to the cold, by the absurd style of dress they 
adopt, and then marvel at the peculiar dispensa- 
tion of Providence, which removes their infants 
by bronchitis and gastric fever? Why is it that 
quackery rides rampant over the land; and that 
not long ago, one of the largest public rooms in 
this great city could be filled by an audience 
gravely listening to the reverend expositor of 
the doctrine that the simple physiological phe- 
nomena known as spirit-rapping, table-turning, 
phreno-magnctism, and by I know not what other 
absurd and inappropriate names, are due to the 
direct and personal agency of Satan? 

Why is all this, except from the utter ignorance 
as to the simplest laws of their own animal life, 
which prevails among even the most highly edu- 
cated persons in this country? 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 225 

But there are other branches of biological 
science, besides physiology proper, whose prac- 
tical influence, though less obvious, is not, as I be- 
lieve, less certain. I have heard educated men 
speak with an ill-disguised contempt of the studies 
of the naturalist, and ask, not without a shrug, 
" What is the use of knowing all about these 
miserable animals what bearing has it on human 
life?" 

I will endeavor to answer that question. I 
take it that all will admit there is definite gov- 
ernment of this universe that its pleasures and 
pains are not scattered at random, but are dis- 
tributed in accordance with orderly and fixed laws, 
and that it is only in accordance with all we know 
of the rest of the world, that there should be an 
agreement between one portion of the sensitive 
creation and another in these matters. 

Surely then it interests us to know the lot of 
other animal creatures however far below us, 
they are still the sole created things which share 
with us the capability of pleasure and the sus- 
ceptibility to pain. 

I cannot but think that he who finds a certain 
proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up 
in the life of the very worms, will bear his own 
share with more courage and submission ; and will, 
at any rate, view with suspicion those weakly 
amiable theories of the Divine government, which 



226 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

would have us believe pain to be an oversight and 
a mistake, to be corrected by and by. On the 
other hand, the predominance of happiness among 
living things their lavish beauty the secret and 
wonderful harmony which pervades them all, from 
the highest to the lowest, are equally striking refu- 
tations of that modern Manichean doctrine, which 
exhibits the world as a slave-mill, worked with 
many tears, for mere utilitarian ends. 1 

There is yet another way in which natural his- 
tory may, I am convinced, take a profound hold 
upon practical life, and that is, by its influence 
over our finer feelings, as the greatest of all 
sources of that pleasure which is derivable from 
beauty. I do not pretend that natural-history 
knowledge, as such, can increase our sense of the 
beautiful in natural objects. I do not suppose 
that the dead soul of Peter Bell, of whom the 
great poet of nature says, 

A primrose by the river's brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more, 2 

would have been a whit roused from its apathy, 
by the information that the primrose is a Dicoty- 
ledonous Exogen, with a monopetalous corolla and 

1 The doctrine taught by Manichaeus, a Persian of the third 
century, A.D., was extremely ascetic. 

2 Wordsworth's Peter BM. 



VALUE OF THE SCIENCES 227 

central placentation. But I advocate natural- 
history knowledge from this point of view, because 
it would lead us to seek the beauties of natural ob- 
jects, instead of trusting to chance to force them 
on our attention. To a person uninstructed in 
natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a 
walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works 
of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned 
to the wall. Teach him something of natural 
history, and you place in his hands a catalogue of 
those which are worth turning round. Surely 
our innocent pleasures are not so abundant in this 
life, that we can afford to despise this or any 
other source of them. We should fear being ban- 
ished for our neglect to that limbo, where the great 
Florentine tells us are those who, during this life, 
" wept when they might be joyful." 1 

But I shall be trespassing unwarrantably on 
your kindness, if I do not proceed at once to my 
last point the time at which physiological science 
should first form a part of the curriculum of edu- 
cation. 

The distinction between the teaching of the 
facts of a science as instruction, and the teaching 
it systematically as knowledge, has already been 
placed before you in a previous lecture: and it 
appears to me that, as with other sciences, the 
common facts of biology the uses of parts of the 
lr The allusion is to Canto VII of Dante's Inferno. 



228 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

body the names and habits of the living crea- 
tures which surround us may be taught with 
advantage to the youngest child. Indeed, the 
avidity of children for this kind of knowledge, and 
the comparative ease with which they retain it, is 
something quite marvellous. I doubt whether any 
toy would be so acceptable to young children as 
a vivarium of the same kind as, but of course 
on a smaller scale than, those admirable devices 
in the Zoological Gardens. 

On the other hand, systematic teaching in biol- 
ogy cannot be attempted with success until the 
student has attained to a certain knowledge of 
physics and chemistry : for though the phenomena 
of life are dependent neither on physical nor on 
chemical, but on vital forces, yet they result in 
all sorts of physical and chemical changes, which 
can only be judged by their own laws. 

And now to sum up in a few words the conclu- 
sions to which I hope you see reason to follow me. 

Biology needs no apologist when she demands a 
place and a prominent place in any scheme of 
education worthy of the name. Leave out the 
physiological sciences from your curriculum, and 
you launch the student into the world, undisci- 
plined in that science whose subject-matter would 
best develop his powers of observation ; ignorant 
of facts of the deepest importance for his own and 
others' welfare ; blind to the richest sources of 



229 

beauty in God's creation ; and unprovided with 
that belief in a living law, and an order mani- 
festing itself in and through endless change and 
variety, which might serve to check and moderate 
that phase of despair through which, if he take an 
earnest interest in social problems, he will as- 
suredly sooner or later pass. 

Finally, one word for myself. I have not hesi- 
tated to speak strongly where I have felt strongly ; 
and I am but too conscious that the indicative 
and imperative moods have too often taken the 
place of the more becoming subjunctive and con- 
ditional. I feel, therefore, how necessary it is to 
beg you to forget the personality of him who has 
thus ventured to address you, and to consider only 
the truth or error in what has been said. 



EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

No part of our educational system occasions 
such searchings of heart or shakings of head as 
does the college. Everywhere else in the field of 
education we have evidence of healthy growth, of 
vigorous life. The high school not many years 
ago maintained an apologetic attitude toward a 
public which grudgingly supported it, but now 
asserts itself as " the people's college." The 
graduate school, with its work of research, hardly 
known, even by name, a generation ago, is to-day 
established, not only as part of our universities, 
but also as part of the scheme of public education. 
The schools of medicine and law have doubled and 
trebled their demands upon the student who seeks 
entrance to the professions whose doors they 
guard. It seems to some of the less hopeful mem- 
bers of our college faculties that, amid these grow- 
ing and spreading institutions, the college course 

1 Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly through the gener- 
ous permission of the Houghton Mifflin Company. 

230 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 231 

is likely to be crowded and starved out of existence. 
From below, the high school has threatened to 
absorb a year or two of its time. Graduate and 
professional schools have reached down to snatch 
away its students from the last year, or even two 
years, of the course. 

The college teacher has lived between these 
forces, in dread of losing his field of labor ; fearing 
that when, like all Gaul, his domain was divided 
into three parts between high school, professional, 
and graduate schools, there would be as little left 
for his control as was left to the Gauls when 
Caesar was through with them. Still more, he has 
felt that the temper of college studies and the 
nature of college students have altered and he 
may be pardoned for thinking have worsened 
greatly. New studies have entered the college; 
many of them technical and alien to the old col- 
lege course. A new type of student has come, 
especially alien, seeking and expecting practical 
results rather than culture. And since all of these 
" changes, present and threatened, have come upon 
him with bewildering rapidity, it is not surprising 
if he sometimes feels that the very life of the 
college is in danger. I do not share his appre- 
hensions, believing that the college has a tough 
and enduring vitality. These changes, whose sig- 
nificance and importance I would not underrate, 
seem to me to have been the result of a natural 



EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

evolution, which has thrown the emphasis of college 
activities and college teaching upon the intellectual 
rather than the ethical side of life. 

Let me draw a little from my own college ex- 
perience and observation, in order to characterize 
this change of temper a little more clearly. Forty 
years ago, I entered college a small Eastern col- 
lege, whose freshman class is now far larger than 
was the college of my day. I cannot boast that 
we, the " few but fit," who were freshmen in 1869 
were intellectual prodigies, of even or exception- 
ally distinguished excellence. The records of my 
class and college mates show that they have taken 
an honorable part in the world's work, but one not 
greatly different from that taken by college 
students of any period before or since. But we 
had at least one merit, or demerit, as contrasted 
with the freshmen of to-day. We did not come to 
college seeking studies which would directly pre- 
pare us for our future career. We entered on a 
four years' college course with no such definite 
plan. We came not merely for the sake of the 
knowledge which we might get from our studies ; 
still less to secure a practical training for life ; 
but for the sake of somewhat vague and intangible 
intellectual gains. We were in search, too, of that 
still less tangible thing, culture, as we found out 
later when Matthew Arnold taught us to use the 
word. 



233 

For the American college of that day was still 
in that condition which it maintained for a great 
part of the nineteenth century, and which one 
may call beatific, or the reverse, according to his 
point of view. In still older times it had been a 
professional school, founded to train godly youth 
for the Christian ministry, and its curriculum and 
its methods had carried out the intention of pious 
founders and equally pious faculties. As time had 
passed it had lost its professional purposes, but 
had retained its intellectual qualities and its eth- 
ical tendencies. During much of the nineteenth 
century the college expressed its own character, 
and wrought out its own purposes, with a free- 
dom and independence which it never enjoyed be- 
fore or since. Ecclesiastical control was a thing 
of the past, as was also the adjustment of teach- 
ing to the needs of the ministry. The correlation 
of college work with the practical demands of so- 
ciety was yet in the future. The college offered 
a simple, homogeneous course of study, so simple 
.and homogeneous that its ends and purposes could 
be clearly seen and definitely sought. The college 
selected carefully those who should become the 
students in this course. The nature of the pro- 
gramme of education which it offered kept frcm 
its halls all but those who thought themselves in 
sympathy with its purposes ; and that it might 
winnow still more perfectly those seekers for 



234- EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

learning, the college established and enforced nar- 
row and rigid terms of admission. 

In 1869 the course of study remained but little 
changed from that of the old time ; for the new 
learning, which forty years ago was the learn- 
ing of science, had barely reached the college. 
Science in name was there indeed, but not in spirit. 
Recitations and illustrative lectures constituted all 
the instruction in physics and chemistry which we 
received from men who later and elsewhere became 
the heads of great laboratories. Of laboratory 
work we had none. Our college indeed had labora- 
tories, but they existed for the professor alone; 
and we used to wonder what the professor did in 
them ; for I suppose that no other laboratories for 
physics and chemistry ever enjoyed such a situa- 
tion as did these, which had a gymnasium above 
them and a bowling-alley beneath. 

The case of the " new humanities " was still 
worse than that of science. We never heard of 
" sources " in history or in literature. We pre- 
pared our lesson from the text-book, recited and 
discussed it, and let the evil of the day suffice to 
itself without further question or debate. Elec- 
tive studies offered us no problem worthy of the 
name. We might choose between one year of 
French and one of German. Otherwise, we ail met 
in the same classes. We accepted the intellectual 
fare that the college set before us, asking no ques- 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 235 

tions for conscience' or any other sake. Latin, 
Greek, mathematics, and philosophy, all taught 
in a way now called " old-fashioned," were still 
the backbone of our course, which lacked almost 
wholly the things which the undergraduate values 
in the college of to-day. 

But simple and impoverished as such a course 
of study must seem to the present generation of 
students, I question whether those of us who were 
exercised thereby would greatly wish to exchange 
it for the far richer programme of the present 
time. For the limitations of the college of our 
day, which we recognize as freely as any one, were 
in some sense of the nature of virtues to the youth 
who sought it. We came to it with no delusions 
as to what the college would give us. We did not 
suppose that Livy and Demosthenes, calculus and 
natural theology, or any combination of these 
studies, would be of " practical value " to us in 
later life. We knew that the life of the college 
was dissociated from the life to follow it; that it 
led directly to no calling, to no profession. This 
was one reason for our going to college. We took 
four years of our youth and devoted them, quite 
unconsciously, to the intellectual life and to the 
ethical spirit. We accepted that life as we found 
it in the college ; not, indeed, without grumbling, 
the immemorial and dearest privilege of the un- 
dergraduate, but without thought of altering its 



236 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

conditions, and at bottom without seriously de- 
siring to do so. The absence of electives was by 
no means an unmixed ill. It was not our duty to 
forecast our future lives and to imagine the result 
upon them of selecting this study or that ; for all 
studies were equally removed from any profession 
except that of a teacher, and in no case was there 
opportunity for choice. 

This freedom from responsibility was, no doubt, 
a loss to us on one side, but in other directions 
it was no small gain. We were free from a host 
of considerations alien to the work of the college. 
Our minds and hearts during our college lives 
were within the college walls, and we were the 
more readily subject to the influences of the place. 
If the methods of teaching history, English, and 
science were imperfect, there were compensating 
advantages. At least, we had no assigned col- 
lateral reading, nor required notes, and literature 
came to us in the form of pleasure rather than of 
work. If we had no laboratory courses, we had 
at least the time which the laboratory would have 
demanded. When the day's lessons had been pre- 
pared, we still had leisure to waste or to improve 
at will. As I look back, I feel that many hours 
of my college life, wasted on ineffective work for 
natural history collections, in loitering in the re- 
moter alcoves of the library, in turning over old 
and forgotten books, have in time yielded me a far 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 237 

larger harvest than much of my serious work. I 
have found that the intellectual fun of college life 
has given me quite as much as its labors. 

Thus we sought and we gained, both from work 
and from play, each according to his desires and 
his capacity, an entrance to the intellectual life. 
We acquired, most of us without becoming con- 
scious of the fact, the rudiments of a liberal edu- 
cation the education of a free man in a free state ; 
the education which, preparing him for no par- 
ticular calling, fits him for a life of freedom. We 
caught a glimpse of the liberating truth; of that 
wisdom which makes one not wholly alien or ill at 
ease in the silent society of the leaders of the 
thought and life of all ages, nor out of place in 
the company of those whose lives to-day are guided 
by the wisdom of the past and inspired by the 
vision of the future. 

The life of the college a generation ago was, 
then, a spiritual life, freed from all considerations 
both of professionalism and of practicality. De- 
void of all direct relations to the life which was 
to follow, it was free to work out its own ideas 
as it never had been before, and as it is not now. 
The intellectual life, lived in an ethical spirit : this 
was central to the college a generation ago, and 
a youth could do far worse than spend four years 
in close contact with that spirit. Do I too greatly 
exalt the life which I shared for four years? I 



238 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

think not, for its defects are clearly before me 
as I write. I recognize that much of its teaching 
was such as would not be tolerated to-day in any 
college of high rank. I see clearly enough its nar- 
rowness, its absurdities. When I think of the use, 
or rather non-use, to which it put the scientific 
abilities of its faculty, I must both smile at the 
situation and grieve at our losses. Yet if I ideal- 
ize it in spite of these faults, in spite of years spent 
in helping to build up a college of another type, 
is not this fact itself the strongest evidence that 
I can give of the power of that life and of the 
quality of its spiritual character? 

But what sort of education came from a course 
of study thus conceived and thus carried out? 
What preparation for modern life could the 
student get from a course that offered practically 
no science, no history, and small German and 
French? Without electives, how could it be 
adapted to varying tastes and necessities? Can 
we call such a course of study adequate, or can 
we fairly name it a liberal education? 

Shall we agree to test this old-fashioned course 
by Milton's still older definition of a liberal edu- 
cation? To my thought, two and a half centuries 
have neither mended nor bettered his conception. 
" I call, therefore," he said, " a complete and gen- 
erous education that which enables a man to per- 
form justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all of 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 239 

the offices, public and private, both of peace and 
war." Let us try our college course by each of 
Milton's words severally. Can we say that it en- 
abled us to perform " skillfully " the offices of 
life? I can hardly claim this virtue for it and yet 
say, as I do, that the course of study was detached 
from life. Assuredly, we must mark it very low 
as rated by this test. 

" Justly " the word gives us longer pause, and 
we must consider what it is to perform justly the 
offices of society. If we mean accurately, constru- 
ing justice in the strict and narrow sense, I fear 
that our college of a generation ago must be 
ranked low in this respect also. Its course of 
study afforded no adequate basis for an accurate 
weighing of competing claims, of conflicting du- 
ties, or of clashing interests. But construe the 
word more broadly, and we shall rate the college 
much higher. Is the sense of just proportion cul- 
tivated by that course of study which, during four 
years, attempts to make the soul sensitive to 
those forces of the invisible world whose presence 
is not readily felt in the hurry and bustle of life? 
Is justice disclosed in a nice weighing of claims 
which stand on the same basis, or in the power to 
set over against the mass of the things of the 
visible world those things which, being not seen, 
are eternal? May not those most wisely adjust 
the claims of conduct who have not indeed been 



taught very much about its rules and methods, 
but who have spent four years amid high thoughts 
and in worthy company and with worthy exam- 
ples? If we assent to this view, then must we 
admit that the old-fashioned college course highly 
fulfilled this part of Milton's conception. 

But " magnanimously " what shall we say to 
this term, which so triumphantly closes Milton's 
triad of qualities, whose sound in the ear is wor- 
thy of the " mighty-mouthed inventor of har- 
monies," and whose sense awakens the soul to sur- 
prise and delight? What did Milton mean by 
"magnanimously"? He might well accept that 
definition which Bacon had given to the word a 
generation earlier : " Magnanimity no doubt con- 
sisteth in contempt of peril, in contempt of profit, 
and in the meriting of the times wherein one liv- 
eth." These are lofty terms, and we graduates 
may well shrink from testing our lives by them, 
lest, as in Bacon's case, the wide difference be- 
tween teaching and practice appear too plainly. 
Yet as I look around me at the college men of 
my generation and see their work for their times, 
I can but feel that their alma mater showed them 
somewhat of this magnanimity. Can we older 
men stand, each in the forum of his own con- 
science, and claim that here I acted in contempt 
of peril, there I rejected profit, and in this re- 
spect I have done somewhat to better my times? 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 241 

If we can do this, do we not feel that in this we 
were but worthy children of alma mater? 

Wherever we must in justice pronounce that 
our actions have lacked her magnanimity, do we 
not feel it as at once our deepest condemnation 
and our bitterest regret that we have fallen away 
from her spirit and her wide view of life? How- 
ever weak we ourselves may have been in the face 
of moral danger, we are sure that alma mater 
lived " in contempt of peril." However heavy the 
dollar may have weighed in the scales of our mo- 
tives, she at least lived " in contempt of profit." 
However pitiful the remainder of benefit which the 
world receives from our lives, hers was unselfishly 
devoted to " meriting the times wherein she lived." 

When the college of a generation ago planned 
the training for the offices of life which its students 
should receive, it set little store by skill. It sup- 
posed that the graduate would acquire this in 
later life, in the natural order of events, and as 
a matter of course. It expected its graduates to 
live justly, rather because of a quickened moral 
sense than from a trained and discriminating 
judgment. The emphasis of its reading of Mil- 
ton's definition was placed on the word " mag- 
nanimously." Out of the three terms which define 
a liberal education, this was the one which the 
Lord had given to the college ; not indeed to be in 
its mouth, but in its heart ; and therefore the col- 



EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

lege of forty years ago furnished its students with 
the rudiments of a liberal education. This it did 
in spite of a limited programme of studies, in spite 
of narrow views of education, of inadequate re- 
sources, of methods already antiquated. It suc- 
ceeded in spite of these and other defects, and in 
some sense by means of them. It succeeded be- 
cause it was able to inspire its alumni with some 
portion of its own intellectual sympathies, of its 
ethical purposes, of its spiritual temper. 

But a generation which has changed all things 
educational has not spared the college, and in 
the early seventies it stood on the brink of great 
and radical alterations, already foreshadowed in 
its actual conditions. First among the influences 
which have wrought these changes, I should place 
the enlargement of the curriculum ; then, the in- 
troduction of research ; and, third, the increase 
in the number of students. All these forces have 
acted and reacted upon one another in most com- 
plex fashion, but all have tended to the same gen- 
eral results. They have increased the emphasis 
on the intellectual rather than on the moral ele- 
ments of a liberal education, and have made the 
college definitely and avowedly a preparatory 
school for life. 

Consider the effect of the first of these forces: 
the enlargement of the curriculum. The begin- 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 243 

nings of this movement go far back beyond the 
days of which I speak. In 1870 the larger uni- 
versities already had numerous elective courses of 
study. Modern languages had long been taught, 
though none of them yet dared claim a place be- 
side the classics. Science had become a necessary 
part of technical courses, and university labora- 
tories for chemistry and physics, and even for 
biological science, were by no means unknown. 
But the college world as a whole knew little of 
modern language or of science. For the student 
of forty years ago a college education still meant 
classics, mathematics, and philosophy. Yet the 
college was about to discover science and to learn 
something of the scientific method, and of its pos- 
sibilities as an educational instrument. 

In the world outside, there was raging the storm 
of scientific controversy, very little of whose vio- 
lence astonishingly little penetrated into the 
quiet retreat of the college. But the contest over 
Darwinism meant that men were thinking about 
science with an intensity, and to an extent, never 
before known in human history, and which will 
probably never be known again. Science thus 
won without the college the right to full recogni- 
tion within it. It was no longer to be recited, to 
be lectured about in brief courses for general in- 
formation and as a relief from severer studies. It 
demanded full and equal admission to the college 



244 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

course; and but a few years were to pass before 
that demand was granted and every college had 
its laboratories for all the fundamental sciences. 

The college world was committed, not only to 
teach about science, but to that vastly different 
and harder thing, to teach science. Important 
changes followed this enlargement of the curric- 
ulum. The new laboratory courses demanded 
numerous teachers, and thus were introduced into 
faculties new men, trained by other methods than 
those of the old college, who brought with them 
a new temper and new ideals. Laboratory courses 
demanded time. Science teachers asked for their 
departments, not a secondary, but a co-ordinate 
place in the curriculum. Thus arose the necessity 
for still further changes. The old scheme of 
studies no longer fitted the new conditions, and the 
full acceptance of the elective system in some form 
became a mere necessity. This was a radical in- 
novation in the college course, and one which 
altered both the nature of the course and the atti- 
tude of the student toward it and toward his work. 

The multiplication of courses did not stop with 
the sciences. The modern languages began to as- 
sert their rights as disciplinary studies, and to 
take position alongside of the older courses in the 
ancient languages. When, in the eighties and 
nineties, men turned their thoughts from science 
and its message regarding man's origin, to ques- 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 245 

tions of government, to social and economic prob- 
lems, they sought the answers from history, from 
economics, from political science, and sociology. 
They sought answers which the general and ele- 
mentary courses of the college could not give, and 
the college was forced to widen the scope of its 
curriculum. Thus the mere necessity of respond- 
ing to the movement and development of public 
thought forced upon the colleges a reorganization 
of their courses of study a revolution which has 
resulted in completely changing the intellectual 
balance of power in the faculty, and which has 
altered at every point the temper of the student's 
life. 

But a change even more fundamental was at 
hand. No event in modern higher education in 
the United States is more significant than the 
foundation of Johns Hopkins University in 1876. 
With this event, research, and training for re- 
search, made their official entrance into American 
college life. I do not mean to say that these were 
unknown before that date. Higher degrees were 
well known, and graduate study, and even grad- 
uate schools had been established. But all these 
were still more or less incidental and accessory. 
They had not been a necessary part of the earlier 
college. Its professors were indeed supposed to 
be learned in the lore of their professions. They 
must be able to teach the known, but it was by 



246 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

no means necessary that they should have either 
the taste or the ability to seek the unknown. 
Neither the college nor the professor included re- 
search within the sphere of duty. But the advent 
of Johns Hopkins University changed all this. 
Research became fundamental, and training for 
research an indispensable factor in the equipment 
of the college professor. 

If the enlargement of the curriculum introduced 
new types of men into college faculties, and if the 
result of the elective system changed the attitude 
of the student toward his work, this introduction 
of research far more fundamentally altered the 
spirit of the faculty toward its duties. As the 
new men, trained in the new method, assumed con- 
trol of college teaching, it became plain that noth- 
ing short of a revolution had occurred. The tem- 
per of the new men differed from that of their 
predecessors. They were drawn to their profession 
by a different complex of motives. The excel- 
lences of the best men were widely various under 
the two systems, and the defects of the failures 
were quite as different. 

It cannot be too clearly seen that the old college 
course concerned itself primarily with conduct, 
with that conduct which we students practiced 
without knowing it, until Arnold defined it and 
told us that it was nine-tenths of life. The spirit 
of research seeks the things of the mind for their 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 247 

own sake. Here is the first and fundamental dis- 
tinction, and one that involved far-reaching con- 
sequences. For both student and teacher the sub- 
ject became central where once the man was placed. 
The enlargement of knowledge came first rather 
than the development of character. The older col- 
lege placed before its students a careful selection 
of " the best things said and thought," and asked 
them to remain for four years, to study these 
things and to gain from them a criticism of life. 
I do not mean that the college was so stupid as to 
put this purpose before its students in this way, 
but this was what it really did ; and, so doing, it 
held its students within the area of the known, 
as near as might be to the spiritual centre of the 
known. 

But the new temper of research was unhappy 
in this region. It was restless until it had escaped 
from the pleasant parks and well-ordered gardens, 
where learning had loved to stay. It sought the 
wilderness of the unknown that it might add it to 
the known. Thus great additions were made to 
the realm of knowledge a rough, uncultivated 
country, or half-cultivated at best, devoid of pleas- 
ure to those trained in the old learning. Research 
rapidly charted it, annexed large areas, and called 
on its students to follow and complete the occu- 
pation of the land. They heard the call; they 
responded to it ; and each, as he entered the coun- 



248 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

try, found duties suited to his nature. Here was 
still the great unknown world beyond the border, 
irresistibly attracting the explorer ; here were the 
pleasures, as well as the hardships, of the pioneer. 
Here, for the vast majority, was that unadven- 
turous and far less inspiring labor by which the 
former frontier is, through toil and time, con- 
verted into the home of civilization. 

Thus a new type of teacher was developed. 
The old professor had become one because he 
wanted to teach. At the best, he became a master 
of men, rather than a master of his subject. Look 
at the great teachers of philosophy in American 
colleges during the nineteenth century. How 
much attention does the philosophical world of 
to-day give to their contributions to their depart- 
ment? Hopkins and McCosh, Hickok and Porter 
their works do not lie to-day on the table of 
the philosophical student. These men were teach- 
ers ; to the problems of life as young men con- 
ceived them, they applied the fundamental ideas 
of philosophy as they conceived it. In human life, 
enriched and ennobled, in a pervasive social influ- 
ence, exercised by them and their students, they 
had and have their high reward ; not in their con- 
tributions to philosophy, still less in the schools of 
philosophy which they founded. Such was the 
older type of the professor at the best, he who 
best incarnated the spirit of the older college. At 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 249 

the worst he was a repeater of the traditions and 
platitudes of his subject, incapable of guiding his 
students to an outlook on learning or on life. 

The new professor became one primarily be- 
cause he was interested in a department of learn- 
ing and desired to study it. He did not find in 
teaching, in the presentation of his subject to 
undergraduates, the fulfillment of his purposes in 
life ; he felt rather that teaching was a duty, 
whose performance gave him the opportunity for 
research. Thus the centre of his interest and of 
his influence has shifted from the older position, 
and the results of his work are correspondingly 
changed. At the best, his studies enrich learning 
with new and fundamental conceptions ; his teach- 
ing attracts those who share his spirit of research, 
and he founds a school in his department ; at the 
worst, he mechanically presents the details of a 
subject whose details he loves to study, but whose 
general truths and vital principles he is unable to 
grasp. 

While these changes were going on in the body 
of the college's teaching, in the temper of its 
students, and in the personnel and spirit of its 
faculty, a third line of alteration was in progress, 
full of significance to the life of the college. If 
one is sufficiently interested in statistics to plot 
the curve of college attendance by years, he will 
find that the curve rises slowly, or remains nearly 



250 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

stationary, until the later eighties, and then be- 
gins to rise rapidly and with an increasing rapid- 
ity to the present time. This means that the 
college was discovered by the public at about the 
date named. The " silver sea " which served this 
" little world " 

In the office of a wall, 
Or as a moat defensive to a house, 

was crossed, and a new population swarmed into 
" this blessed plot, this earth, this realm," whose 
secluded happiness I have sketched. 

Seclusion has become a thing of the past, and 
modern life with its rush and hurry pervades the 
college campus. I do not think that the college 
has ever enjoyed the change. Sometimes it has 
struggled against it, multum reluctans^ but 
vainly ; more often it has contented itself with re- 
grets for the past, and has looked back wistfully 
to older days. But the discovery was inevitable, 
and the results of the discovery equally so. So 
long as the college expected the public to accept 
its terms, to accept the education which it offered, 
or to leave it alone, it was safe from practical con- 
siderations. But when once it opened the door to 
modern knowledge, to modern methods, and to 
modern life, they naturally entered and dwelt with 
it. The college meant to open the door but a 

1 Very unwillingly. 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 251 

little way. It did not invite these new guests to 
share the house on equal terms, but it found that, 
when once they had established themselves, they 
were no longer guests but members of the family. 
The new college, thus constituted, had necessarily 
a new life and a new spirit. It stood in new rela- 
tions to the rest of the world. No longer master 
of a little world of its own, it had become the 
servant of a larger people. 

Thus the college of to-day is to be contrasted 
rather than compared with that of forty years 
ago. Outer form and inner spirit have alike 
changed. Familiarity with the facts does not 
render less startling the increase in the numbers of 
teachers and students to-day as compared with 
those of the past ; nor do we cease to wonder at 
the multiplication of buildings, and at the 
growth of endowments, at a rate unexampled 
in history. But these evidences of material 
change are slight beside the spiritual and educa- 
tional differences. 

It is by no means my purpose to pronounce a 
eulogy on the " good old times." For one reason, 
I am not yet old enough to do it gracefully. For 
another, my work since I left college has been to 
aid in building up a college of the newer type, in 
which I heartily believe. All of the alterations 
which I have described have been, on the whole, 
for the best. The movement has been natural, 



252 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

necessary, inevitable ; it has been upward as well 
as onward, and we who have given our years to 
help it forward have done so without the necessity 
for justification or apology. Yet we are not 
without regret for the life that has been left, 
while we welcome the new life into which we have 
entered. We hail the spirit of research, the most 
fundamental of the changes which I have named, 
we see the mighty intellectual uplift which it has 
contributed to our colleges. Yet it still may be 
permitted to us to regret the fine enjoyment of 
letters, the sense of elegant leisure, and of cul- 
tured pleasure, some part of which our colleges 
have lost. We are proud of the fact that our 
colleges yield to the community a more complete, 
a larger service than in the past. Yet we need 
not be ashamed to regret that in losing that nar- 
rowness which limited the influence of the older 
college, something of her independence has gone, 
and with it some part of that which made her 
influence precious. 

In a word, we have paid a price for our new 
possessions ; not an exorbitant price, I think ; in- 
deed, I believe it a small one to pay for great 
gains. Yet paid it has been and still must be ; 
and, until fully paid, the college will suffer from 
the debt. The experimental method has become 
habitual to us. Nothing is fixed ; nothing settled. 
The very narrowness of the old college, both in 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 253 

purpose and method, made that purpose and 
method clear and consistent ; but we who are con- 
tinually adjusting and readjusting come at last 
to lose the sense of aim and to abandon method. 
We who are members of faculties have frankly 
given up the task of prescribing courses of study 
as an impossible one. We say that only omnis- 
cience can wisely prescribe a college course. We 
abandon the task as beyond our collective wisdom, 
and we look for the omniscience necessary to com- 
prehend the possibilities of a college catalogue to 
the youth or maiden of eighteen, whom the high 
school sends to us. We do not desire technical 
studies in our college of liberal arts, but the more 
we read our catalogues, the more clearly we admit 
that we do not know what is a liberal and what a 
technical study. We end by admitting almost, or 
quite, all to our curriculum, and if we rule out 
any we are quite sure that we have admitted that 
which had as little claim. We do not wish to be- 
come preparatory schools for law or medicine. 
Yet we find that we must meet the fair and legiti- 
mate needs of our students who are to enter these 
professions. Thus we move: often drifting; al- 
ways ill at ease with ourselves, because our plans 
and our methods are tentative and hesitant. Our 
aims, too, are incoherent. Do we desire to culti- 
vate the intellectual life in our students, to pre- 
pare them, for professional study, or to select out 



EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

of the mass of students the few who are fit for 
research and to train them? Or would we adhere 
to the traditional function of the older college? 
We would do all of these things ; do them at once 
and in the same classes. No wonder that we fail 
to see just how to direct our teaching so as to 
secure results so diverse, so irreconcilable. 

With this hesitation there has come a distrac- 
tion of spirit. We have lost the " sweet serenity 
of books," and we have not gained the freedom 
of pure research. We have lost the independence 
born of detachment from life, and have not gained 
the poise of practical efficiency. We have lost the 
sense of the mastery of ourselves and of our public, 
and in all things we have become experimental. 
In brief, we have suffered, and are suffering, from 
that distraction of spirit which always accom- 
panies great and rapidly acquired gains ; gains too 
large to be quickly mastered or readily put to 
full and easy use. 

What then shall we say of the college of the 
present if we bring it to Milton's test? Its grad- 
uates have far more skill than those of a genera- 
tion or more ago. Numerous and widely varied 
courses bring into her class-rooms for discussion 
the principles which underlie every part of life. 
In a hundred ways the student is made to see for 
himself, to think for himself, granting that he 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 255 

has any capacity for thought, where his father 
was only made to learn. Skill of both brain and 
hand is cultivated in a score of laboratories. If 
the college graduate of to-day does not enter on 
life more skillful than his father did, it is surely 
his own fault. 

If the college of to-day is inferior to its prede- 
cessor in enabling its graduates to act justly, this 
is mainly because so many of them choose a course 
which deals with knowledge rather than with ac- 
tion. They will find, I think, less of inspiration 
with that increased knowledge, but if not so highly 
motived, their performance or duty will be more 
discriminating. They will have also the advantage 
that their thoughts have been turned to the prob- 
lems for whose solution there is needed a discrim- 
inating justice. It was possible that the very ele- 
vation and consequent remoteness of the ideals of 
the old college should allow the graduate to hold 
them as matters for his leisure alone, not as a part 
of the motives for business and for public life. 
The graduate of to-day cannot fail to remember 
the teachings of his college on historical and social 
problems, as these press upon him in the first years 
of his active life for that answer which comes with 
practical decision; nor can he fail to be guided 
toward a broader and wiser justice in reaching his 
decisions. 

I hesitate to touch the last term lest I should 



256 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

be misunderstood ; yet we must face the question : 
do the changes in college life tend toward a larger 
magnanimity? I do not think that we can fairly 
answer in the affirmative. I know that it is easy 
to be mistaken on this point. It is easy for us old 
graduates to see in the life of our own college days 
a greater magnanimity than was really present, 
and it is still easier for us to have a keen sense of 
the faults of to-day and to be insensitive toward 
its underlying strength of purpose. There has 
been an enormous increase of intellectual posses- 
sions, an increased attention to problems of knowl- 
edge rather than of conduct, a rapid multiplica- 
tion of points of contact with the outside world, 
and a response to the demand of the world for 
skill. All these changes tend to usefulness, to in- 
creased efficiency, but not to magnanimity. Here 
is no indictment of the modern college, no thought 
that her life will not now, as in the past, inspire 
her sons and daughters, no suspicion that they 
will not play their full and worthy part in the 
world of to-morrow, as their fathers are doing 
in the world of to-day. It is a recognition at once 
of the fact that part of the price of progress has 
been a decline in the fine spirit of magnanimity, 
and of the duty which lies on the college to renew 
that spirit on wider and more secure conditions 
than those of the past. 

I have ever believed that these ills are " growing 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 257 

pains," and that in growth lies their only cure. 
We might as well agree at once that there will 
be no return to old conditions and methods. Men 
may, if it pleases them, talk eloquently of " hark- 
ing back to the humanities," and no doubt the 
humanities will play a larger part in the college 
of the future than they do to-day, but they will 
never occupy the whole stage as they once did. 
The college curriculum is permanently enlarged. 
Very likely it has grown too far in certain direc- 
tions. It probably includes less than it ought in 
other directions, and unquestionably any abridg- 
ment of its courses on one side will be more than 
offset by growth on others. The last forty years 
have enlarged the charter of liberal education, and 
the college catalogue only reflects this fact. We 
shall never return to the old, simple, self-centred 
college of the past. Our way out is the way on, 
and progress is the only solution of our difficulties. 
Time will bring with it an increasing mastery of 
our materials. We shall sooner or later cease to 
be always experimenting with everything. We shall 
still have enough material for experiment, but all 
studies will not always be in a state of unstable 
equilibrium. With this mastery of our material 
of teaching will come a clarifying of our purposes. 
We members of faculties will see again pretty 
clearly that some things in education are good 
for certain intellectual purposes. We shall ven- 



258 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

ture to say so ; and, when we do this, students will 
trust our judgment. Seeing our purposes, and 
understanding how to adjust our teaching so as 
to attain them, we shall directly seek such ends 
and consciously shape our courses of study so as 
to reach them. 

There will be an enlargement of ideas, on the 
side of both student and teacher. The student will 
not cease to look to the college for a practical 
preparation for life, but he will enlarge his ideas 
of practicality. He will see that there is some- 
thing practical in preparing for living, as well as 
in preparing for work. Many of the members of 
our senior classes to-day have shaped their college 
course with reference to the future study of medi- 
cine or of law. A generation later their sons will 
not be so eager as were their fathers to confine 
their college studies to the sciences immediately 
antecedent to their profession. Years will have 
brought a larger wisdom to the fathers and they 
will have learned that life, even for a physician, 
consists in something beyond the abundance of 
bacteriology and pathology. The coming lawyer 
may learn that it is not wholly practical for him 
to make his undergraduate course as nearly a legal 
one as is permitted by the conditions of election 
in his college. I am even so optimistic as to think 
it not impossible that even the general public will 
revise its notions of practicality. At any rate, 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 259 

my experience as a teacher has seen one complete 
change of judgment in this matter. When I began 
to teach zoology my teeth were continually set on 
edge by the well-meaning friends who talked wisely 
of the practical nature of the study of science as 
contrasted with language. For the past fifteen 
years, or more, I have heard nothing of this. All 
are now aware that the study of science is no 
more practical, and no less so, than is the study 
of philosophy. To-day that " practicality " 
which once seemed to inhere in science is placed 
in the study of history and of economics. In 
fifteen years more the world may have learned that 
these new humanities are chiefly valuable, not as 
furnishing practical guides to the affairs of active 
life, but because they stand with the old humani- 
ties, with the sciences, with philosophy, as furnish- 
ing a way into the intellectual life. It may well 
be that students will learn that in coming to college 
they are seeking the intellectual life, and that the 
way in which they reach it matters little, so that 
the result have in it abundant vitality and many 
points of growth. 

On the side of the faculties I look for the more 
complete recognition of the spirit of culture along 
with that of research. This process is already ad- 
vanced in the departments of language. We 
rarely see to-day those extremes of science to 
which our language-teaching tended a decade, or 



260 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

more, ago. Even candidates for the doctorate of 
philosophy are not set to work to count and tabu- 
late the particles in an author's works, and 
throughout the ranks the students are more hu- 
manely treated. Yet such change comes readily 
in these departments, because the region of the 
known is so large and that is so small which is 
at once unknown and unknowable. In the sciences 
it will long be difficult to secure courses for cul- 
ture. The unknown world of science is so vast, 
so close, that it beckons the student with an irre- 
sistible attraction. When the fields of knowledge 
are white to the harvest, it is not easy for the 
teacher to avoid recruiting laborers for them and 
setting them to work. Yet here, too, we shall find 
ways and methods for making the truths of science 
more available than they now are for training the 
average unscientific student, who does not expect 
to be a scientist, but who does need such a turn 
to his mind that he can orient himself in a world 
whose movement comes to depend more and more 
on science. 

Progress toward shaping the college course for 
its proper work will be hastened by that revival 
of the ethical spirit in college which has already 
begun, and which will go on with increasing ra- 
pidity. The spirit of research, like any new ideal, 
has so filled our minds as to belittle older ideals 
and make them seem old-fashioned and inadequate. 



A CHANGE OF EMPHASIS 261 

Time will give us a better perspective, and we 
shall learn that the art of adjusting the subject 
to the mind of the college student is as difficult 
and as worthy of study as is the enlargement of 
the subject itself. The student will take his due 
place in the teacher's mind, not to the obscuring 
of the importance of the study, as was the case 
in the past ; not hidden and dwarfec. behind the 
subject, as is too often the case at present. They 
will stand side by side, and the teacher's main 
problem will be how to adjust one to the other, so 
that the study may enlarge the student's life and 
the student may come to share though it may 
well be in small degree the life of the study. 

Thus the college of to-day has given first place 
in its curriculum, in its thought, and in its life, 
to the first of Milton's triad of qualities. It is 
seeking first of all to give its graduates skill in 
performing the offices of life. It places no low 
or unworthy meaning on the word. It aims at no 
result to be reached by precept. It seeks no cheap 
or hasty practicality. The skill sought is that 
which comes from the mastery of principles. The 
college attempts also to fit its students to deal 
justly in society, and for this result it looks to a 
careful training in the principles which underlie 
society, rather than to the free working of a gen- 
eral moral impulse. The college aims to secure 
for its graduates that magnanimity of which cul- 



262 EDWARD ASAHEL BIRGE 

ture is a part, and which, like culture, can never 
be directly sought or inculcated. Yet this part 
of its purposes has been obscured by the response 
which it has made to the new and vigorous de- 
mands of a changing social order. New condi- 
tions have brought to the front new ideals, which 
for a time disturbed the balance of its life. The 
old life will not return, and if it could do so we 
should be even more dissatisfied with it than with 
the present. Neither reaction nor revolution will 
hasten the working of the vital forces which are 
perfecting the new life, whose adjustment will be 
reached as the new motives find their place beside 
the older. The new college will not swing back 
into the old life; but, embodying a higher skill 
than its predecessor, as well as a truer justice and 
a wider magnanimity, will yield to its students a 
more " complete and generous education." 



AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 1 

JOHN TYNDALL 

THERE is an idea regarding the nature of man 
which modern philosophy has sought, and is still 
seeking, to raise into clearness, the idea, namely, 
of secular growth. Man is not a thing of jester- 
day; nor do I imagine that the slightest con- 
troversial tinge is imported into this address when 
I say that he is not a thing of 6,000 years ago. 
Whether he came originally from stocks or stones, 
from nebulous gas or solar fire, I know not ; if 
he had any such origin the process of his trans- 
formation is as inscrutable to you and to me as 
that of the grand old legend, according to which 
" the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life ; and man became a living soul." But, 
however obscure man's origin may be, his growth 
is not to be denied. Here a little and there a 
little added through the ages have slowly trans- 
formed him from what he was into what he is. 
The doctrine has been held that the mind of the 

1 An address to the students of University College, London, 
in the session 1868-69. 

263 



264 JOHN TYNDALL 

child is like a sheet of white paper, on which by 
education we can write what characters we please. 
This doctrine assuredly needs qualification and 
correction. In physics, when an external force 
is applied to a body with a view of affecting its 
inner texture, if we wish to predict the result, we 
must know whether the external force conspires 
with or opposes the internal forces of the body 
itself; and in bringing the influence of education 
to bear upon the new-born man his inner powers 
must be also taken into account. He comes to us 
as a bundle of inherited capacities and tendencies, 
labelled " from the indefinite past to the indefinite- 
future ; " and he makes his transit from the one 
to the other through the education of the present 
time. The object of that education is, or ought 
to be, to provide wise exercise for his capacities, 
wise direction for his tendencies, and through this 
exercise and this direction to furnish his mind with 
such knowledge as may contribute to the useful- 
ness, the beauty, and the nobleness of his life. 

How is this discipline to be secured, this knowl- 
edge imparted? Two rival methods now solicit 
attention the one organized and equipped, the 
labor of centuries having been expended in bring- 
ing it to its present state of perfection ; the other, 
more or less chaotic, but becoming daily less so, 
and giving signs of enormous power, both as a 
source of knowledge and as a means of discipline. 



AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 265 

These two methods are the classical and the scien- 
tific method. I wish they were not rivals ; it is 
only bigotry and short-sightedness that make 
them so ; for assuredly it is possible to give both 
of them fair play. Though hardly authorized to 
express any opinion whatever upon the subject, 
I nevertheless hold the opinion that the proper 
study of a language is an intellectual discipline 
of the highest kind. If I except discussions on 
the comparative merits of popery and Protestant- 
ism, English grammar was the most important 
discipline of my boyhood. The piercing through 
the involved and inverted sentences of " Paradise 
Lost ; " the linking of the verb to its often distant 
nominative, of the relative to its distant ante- 
cedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive 
verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun 
which it governed the study of variations in 
mood and tense, the transformations often neces- 
sary to bring out the true grammatical structure 
of a sentence all this was to my young mind a 
discipline of the highest value, and, indeed, a 
source of unflagging delight. How I rejoiced 
when I found a great author tripping, and was 
fairly able to pin him to a corner from which 
there was no escape ! As I speak, some of the 
sentences which exercised me when a boy rise to 
my recollection. " He that hath ears to hear 
let him hear." That was one of them, where the 



266 JOHN TYNDALL 

" He " is left, as it were, floating in mid air with- 
out any verb to support it. I speak thus of Eng- 
lish because it was of real value to me. I do not 
speak of other languages because their educational 
value for me was almost insensible. ' But, knowing 
the value of English so well, I should be the last 
to deny, or even to doubt, the high discipline in- 
volved in the proper study of Latin and Greek. 

That study, moreover, has other merits and 
recommendations which have been already slightly 
touched upon. It is organized and systematized 
by long-continued use. It is an instrument 
wielded by some of the best intellects of the coun- 
try in the education of youth; and it can 
point to results in the achievements of our fore- 
most men. What, then, has science to offer which 
is in the least degree likely to compete with such 
a system? I cannot better reply than by recur- 
ring to the grand old story from which I have 
already quoted. Speaking of the world and all 
that therein is, of the sky and the stars around 
it, the ancient writer says, " And God saw all that 
he had made, and behold it was very good." It 
is the body of things thus described which science 
offers to the study of man. There is a very re- 
nowned argument much prized and much quoted 
by theologians, in which the universe is compared 
to a watch. Let us deal practically with this com- 
parison. Supposing a watchmaker, having com- 



AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 267 

pleted his instrument, to be so satisfied with his 
work as to call it very good, what would you 
understand him to mean? You would not suppose 
that he referred to the dial-plate in front and 
the chasing of the case behind, so much as to the 
wheels and pinions, the springs and jewelled pivots 
of the works within, those qualities and powers, in 
short, which enable the watch to perform accu- 
rately its work as a keeper of time. With regard 
to the knowledge of such a watch he would be a 
mere ignoramus who would content himself with 
outward inspection. I do not wish to say one 
severe word here to-day, but I fear that many 
of those who are very loud in their praise of the 
works of the Lord know them only in this outside 
and superficial way. It is the inner works of the 
universe which science reverently uncovers ; it is 
the study of these that she recommends as a dis- 
cipline worthy of all acceptation. 

The ultimate problem of physics is to reduce 
matter by analysis to its lowest condition of 
divisibility, and force to its simplest manifesta- 
tions, and then by synthesis to construct from 
these elements the world as it stands. We are still 
a long way from the final solution of this problem ; 
and when the solution comes, it will be one more 
of spiritual insight than of actual observation. 
But though we are still a long way from this com- 
plete intellectual mastery of Nature, we have con- 



5268 JOHN TYNDALL 

quered vast regions of it, have learned their poli- 
ties and the play of their powers. We live upon a 
ball of matter eight thousand miles in diameter, 
swathed by an atmosphere of unknown height. 
This ball has been molten by heat, chilled to a 
solid, and sculptured by water ; it is made up of 
substances possessing distinctive properties and 
modes of action, properties which have an immedi- 
ate bearing upon the continuance of man in health, 
and on his recovery from disease, on which more- 
over depend all the arts of industrial life. These 
properties and modes of action offer problems to 
the intellect, some profitable to the child, and 
others sufficient to tax the highest powers of the 
philosopher. Our native sphere turns on its axis 
and revolves in space. It is one of a band which 
do the same. It is illuminated by a sun which, 
though nearly a hundred millions of miles distant, 
can be brought virtually into our closets and 
there subjected to examination. It has its winds 
and clouds, its rain and frost, its light, heat, 
sound, electricity, and magnetism. And it has its 
vast kingdoms of animals and vegetables. To a 
most amazing extent the human mind has con- 
quered these things, and revealed the logic which 
runs through them. Were they facts only, with- 
out logical relationship, science might, as a means 
of discipline, suffer in comparison with language. 
But the whole body of phenomena is instinct with 



AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 269 

law; the facts are hung on principles, and the 
value of physical science as a means of discipline 
consists in the motion of the intellect, both in- 
ductively and deductively, along the lines of law 
marked out by phenomena. As regards that dis- 
cipline to which I have already referred as deriva- 
ble from the study of languages that, and more, 
are involved in the study of physical science. In- 
deed, I believe it would be possible so to limit and 
arrange the study of a portion of physics as to 
render the mental exercise involved in it almost 
qualitatively the same as that involved in the un- 
ravelling of a language. 

I have thus far limited myself to the purely in- 
tellectual side of this question. But man is not 
all intellect. If he were so, science would, I be- 
lieve, be his proper nutriment. But he feels as 
well as thinks ; he is receptive of the sublime and 
the beautiful as well as of the true. Indeed, I 
believe that even the intellectual action of a com- 
plete man is, consciously or unconsciously, sus- 
tained by an under-current of the emotions. It is 
vain, I think, to attempt to separate moral and 
emotional nature from intellectual nature. Let a 
man but observe himself, and he will, if I mistake 
not, find that in nine cases out of ten, moral or 
immoral considerations, as the case may be, are 
the motive force which pushes his intellect into 
action. The reading of the works of two men, 



270 JOHN TYNDALL 

neither of them imbued with the spirit of modern 
science, neither of them, indeed, friendly to that 
spirit, has placed me here to-day. These men are 
the English Carlyle and the American Emerson. 
I must ever remember with gratitude that through 
three long, cold German winters Carlyle placed 
me in my tub, even when ice was on its surface, 
at five o'clock every morning; not slavishly, but 
cheerfully, meeting each day's studies with a reso- 
lute will, determined whether victor or vanquished 
not to shrink from difficulty. I never should have 
gone through analytical geometry and the cal- 
culus had it not been for those men. I never 
should have become a physical investigator, and 
hence without them I should not have been here 
to-day. They told me what I ought to do in a 
way that caused me to do it, and all my conse- 
quent intellectual action is to be traced to this 
purely moral source. To Carlyle and Emerson 
I ought to add Fichte, the greatest representative 
of pure idealism. These three unscientific men 
made me a practical scientific worker. They 
called out, " Act ! " I hearkened to the sum- 
mons, taking the liberty, however, of determining 
for myself the direction which effort was to take. 
And I may now cry, " Act ! " but the potency 
of action must be yours. I may pull the trigger, 
but if the gun be not charged there is no result. 
We are creators in the intellectual world as little 



AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 271 

as in the physical. We may remove obstacles, and 
render latent capacities active, but we cannot sud- 
denly change the nature of man. The " new 
birth " itself implies the preexistence of the new 
character which requires not to be created but 
brought forth. You cannot by any amount of 
missionary labor suddenly transform the savage 
into the civilized Christian. The improvement of 
man is secular not the work of an hour or of 
a day. But though indubitably bound by our or- 
ganizations, no man knows what the potentialities 
of any human mind may be, which require only 
release to be brought into action. Let me illus- 
trate this point. There are in the mineral world 
certain crystals, certain forms, for instance, of 
fluor-spar, which have lain darkly in the earth for 
ages, but which nevertheless have a potency of 
light locked up within them. In their case the po- 
tential has never become actual the light is in 
fact held back by a molecular detent. When these 
crystals are warmed, the detent is lifted, and an 
outflow of light immediately begins. I know not 
how many of you may be in the condition of this 
fluor-spar. For aught I know, every one of you 
may be in this condition, requiring but the proper 
agent to be applied the proper word to be 
spoken to remove a detent, and to render you 
conscious of light within yourselves and sources 
of light to others. 



272 JOHN TYNDALL 

The circle of human nature, then, is not com- 
plete without the arc of feeling and emotion. The 
lilies of the field have a value for us beyond their 
botanical ones a certain lightening of the heart 
accompanies the declaration that " Solomon in all 
his glory was not arrayed like one of these." The 
sound of the village bell which comes mellowed 
from the valley to the traveller upon the hill, has 
a value beyond its acoustical one. The setting sun 
when it mantles with the bloom of roses the alpine 
snows, has a value beyond its optical one. The 
starry heavens, as you know, had for Immanuel 
Kant a value beyond their astronomical one. 
Round about the intellect sweeps the horizon of 
emotions from which all our noblest impulses are 
derived. I think it very desirable to keep this 
horizon open ; not to permit either priest or 
philosopher to draw down his shutters between 
you and it. And here the dead languages, which 
are sure to be beaten by science in the purely in- 
tellectual fight, have an irresistible claim. [They 
supplement the work of science by exalting and 
refining the aesthetic faculty, and must on this 
account be cherished by all who desire to see 
human culture complete, j There must be a reason 
for the fascination which these languages have so 
long exercised upon the most powerful and ele- 
vated minds a fascination which will probably 



AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 273 

continue for men of Greek and Roman mould to 
the end of time. 

In connection with this question of the emotions 
one very obvious danger besets many of the more 
earnest spirits of our day the danger of haste 
in endeavoring to give the feelings repose. We 
are distracted by systems of theology and philos- 
ophy which were taught to us when young, and 
which now excite in us a hunger and a thirst for 
knowledge not proved to be attainable. There are 
periods when the judgment ought to remain in 
suspense, the data on which a decision might be 
based being absent. This discipline of suspending 
the judgment is a common one in science, but not 
so common as it ought to be elsewhere. I walked 
down Regent Street some time ago with a man of 
great gifts and acquirements, discussing with him 
various theological questions. I could not accept 
his views of the origin and destiny of the uni- 
verse, nor was I prepared to enunciate any defi- 
nite views of my own. He turned to me at length 
and said, " You surely must have a theory of the 
universe." That I should in one way or another 
have solved this mystery of mysteries seemed to 
my friend a matter of course. " I have not even 
a theory of magnetism," was 1113' reply. We ought 
to learn to wait, and pause before closing with the 
advances of those expounders of the ways of God 



274 JOHN TYNDALL 

to men, who offer us intellectual peace at the 
modest cost of intellectual life. 

The teachers of the world ought to be its best 
men, and for the present at all events such men 
must learn self-trust. They must learn more and 
more to do without external aid ; save such aid as 
comes from the contemplation of a universe, which, 
though it baffles the intellect, can elevate the heart. 
But they must learn to feel the mystery of that 
universe without attempting to give it a rigid 
form, personal or otherwise. By the fulness and 
freshness of their own lives and utterances they 
must awaken life in others. The position of sci- 
ence is already assured, but I think the poet also 
will have a great part to play in the future of the 
world. To him it is given for a long time to come 
to fill those shores which the recession of the the- 
ologic tide has left exposed ; to him, when he 
rightly understands his mission, and does not 
flinch from the tonic discipline which it assuredly 
demands, we have a right to look for that height- 
ening and brightening of life which so many of 
us need. He ought to be the interpreter of that 
power which as 

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, 

has hitherto filled and strengthened the human 
heart. 

Let me utter one practical word in conclusion 



AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 275 

take care of your health. There have been men 
who by wise attention to this point might have 
risen to any eminence might have made great 
discoveries, written great poems, commanded 
armies, or ruled states, but who by unwise neglect 
of this point have come to nothing. Imagine 
Hercules as oarsman in a rotten boa,t ; what can 
he do there but by the very force of his stroke 
expedite the ruin of his craft. Take care then 
of the timbers of your boat, and avoid all prac- 
tices likely to introduce either wet or dry rot 
among them. And this is not to be accomplished 
by desultory or intermittent efforts of the will, 
but by the formation of habits. The will no doubt 
has sometimes to put forth its strength in order 
to strangle or crush the special temptation. But 
the formation of right habits is essential to your 
permanent security. They diminish your chance 
of falling when assailed, and they augment your 
chance of recovery when overthrown. 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE l 

MATTHEW ARNOLD 

PRACTICAL people talk with a smile of Plato 
and of his absolute ideas ; and it is impossible to 
deny that Plato's ideas do often seem unpractical 
and impracticable, and especially when one views 
them in connection with the life of a great work-a- 
day world like the United States. The necessary 
staple of the life of such a world Plato regards 
with disdain ; handicraft and trade and the work- 
ing professions he regards with disdain ; but what 
becomes of the life of an industrial modern com- 
munity if you take handicraft and trade and the 
working professions out of it? The base mechanic 
arts and handicrafts, says Plato, bring about a 
natural weakness in the principle of excellence in 
a man, so that he cannot govern the ignoble 
growths in him, but nurses them, and cannot un- 
derstand fostering any other. Those who exercise 
such arts and trades, as they have their bodies, 
he says, marred by their vulgar businesses, so they 

1 An address delivered repeatedly during a visit to America 
in 1883-84-. Reprinted through the generous permission of 
The Macmillan Company. 

276 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 277 

have their souls, too, bowed and broken by them. 
And if one of these uncomely people has a mind 
to seek self-culture and philosophy, Plato com- 
pares him to a bald little tinker, who has scraped 
together money, and has got his release from 
service, and has had a bath, and bought a new 
coat, and is rigged out like a bridegroom about to 
marry the daughter of his master who has fallen 
into poor and helpless estate. 

Nor do the working professions fare any better 
than trade at the hands of Plato. He draws for 
us an inimitable picture of the working lawyer, 
and of his life of bondage ; he shows how this 
bondage from his youth up has stunted and 
warped him, and made him small and crooked of 
soul, encompassing him with difficulties which he 
is not man enough to rely on justice and truth as 
means to encounter, but has recourse, for help out 
of them, to falsehood and wrong. And so, says 
Plato, this poor creature is bent and broken, and 
grows up from boy to man without a particle of 
soundness in him, although exceedingly smart and 
clever in his own esteem. 

One cannot refuse to admire the artist who 
draws these pictures. But we say to ourselves 
that his ideas show the influence of a primitive and 
obsolete order of things, when the warrior caste 
and the priestly caste were alone in honor, and 
the humble work of the world was done by slaves. 



278 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

We have now changed all that ; the modern ma- 
jority consists in work, as Emerson declares; and 
in work, we may add, principally of such plain 
and dusty kind as the work of cultivators of the 
ground, handicraftsmen, men of trade and busi- 
ness, men of the working professions. Above all 
is this true in a great industrious community such 
as that of the United States. 

Now education, many people go on to say, is 
still mainly governed by the ideas of men like 
Plato, who lived when the warrior caste and the 
priestly or philosophical class were alone in honor, 
and the really useful part of the community were 
slaves. It is an education fitted for persons of 
leisure in such a community. This education 
passed from Greece and Rome to the feudal com- 
munities of Europe, where also the warrior caste 
and the priestly caste were alone held in honor, 
and where the really useful and working part of 
the community, though not nominally slaves as in 
the pagan world, were practically not much better 
off than slaves, and not more seriously regarded. 
And how absurd it is, people end by saying, to 
inflict this education upon an industrious modern 
community, where very few indeed are persons of 
leisure, and the mass to be considered has not 
leisure, but is bound, for its own great good, and 
for the great good of the world at large, to plain 
labor and to industrial pursuits, and the educa- 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 279 

tion in question tends necessarily to make men dis- 
satisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for them ! 

That is what is said. So far I must defend 
Plato, as to plead that his view of education and 
studies is in the general, as it seems to me, sound 
enough, and fitted for all sorts and conditions of 
men, whatever their pursuits may be. " An in- 
telligent man," says Plato, " will prize those 
studies which result in his soul getting soberness, 
righteousness, and wisdom, and will less value the 
others." I cannot consider that a bad description 
of the aim of education, and of the motives which 
should govern us in the choice of studies, whether 
we are preparing ourselves for a hereditary seat 
in the English House of Lords or for the pork 
trade in Chicago. 

Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, 
that his scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic, 
that he had no conception of a great industrial 
community such as that of the United States, and 
that such a community must and will shape its 
education to suit its own needs. If the usual edu- 
cation handed down to it from the past does not 
suit it, it will certainly before long drop this and 
try another. The usual education in the past has 
been mainly literary. The question is whether the 
studies which were long supposed to be the best 
for all of us are practically the best now ; whether 
others are not better. The tyranny of the past, 



280 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

many think, weighs on us injuriously in the pre- 
dominance given to letters in education. The ques- 
tion is raised whether, to meet the needs of our 
modern life, the predominance ought not now to 
pass from letters to science; and naturally the 
question is nowhere raised with more energy than 
here in the United States. The design of abasing 
what is called " mere literary instruction and edu- 
cation," and of exalting what is called " sound, ex- 
tensive, and practical scientific knowledge," is, in 
this intensely modern world of the United States, 
even more perhaps than in Europe, a very popular 
design, and makes great and rapid progress. 

I am going to ask whether the present move- 
ment for ousting letters from their old predom- 
inance in education, and for transferring the pre- 
dominance in education to the natural sciences, 
whether this brisk and flourishing movement ought 
to prevail, and whether it is likely that in the end 
it really will prevail. An objection may be raised 
which I will anticipate. My own studies have been 
almost wholly in letters, and my visits to the field 
of the natural sciences have been very slight and 
inadequate, although those sciences have always 
strongly moved my curiosity. A man of letters, 
it will perhaps be said, is not competent to discuss 
the comparative merits of letters and natural sci- 
ence as means of education. To this objection I 
reply, first of all, that his incompetence, if he at- 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 281 

tempts the discussion but is really incompetent for 
it, will be abundantly visible ; nobody will be taken 
in ; he will have plenty of sharp observers and 
critics to save mankind from that danger. But 
the line I am going to follow is, as you will soon 
discover, so extremely simple, that perhaps it may 
be followed without failure even by one who for 
a more ambitious line of discussion would be quite 
incompetent. 

Some of you may possibly remember a phrase 
of mine which has been the object of a good deal 
of comment; an observation to the effect that in 
our culture, the aim being to know ourselves and 
the world, we have, as the means to this end, to 
know the best which has been thought and said 
in the world. A man of science, who is also an 
excellent writer and the very prince of debaters, 
Professor Huxley, in a discourse at the opening of 
Sir Josiah Mason's college at Birmingham, laying 
hold of this phrase, expanded it by quoting some 
more words of mine, which are these : " The civil- 
ized world is to be regarded as now being, for 
intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great con- 
federation, bound to a joint action and working 
to a common result; and whose members have for 
their proper outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, 
and Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Spe- 
cial local and temporary advantages being put out 
of account, that modern nation will in the intel- 



282 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

lectual and spiritual sphere make most progress, 
which most thoroughly carries out this pro- 
gramme." 

Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor 
Huxley remarks that when I speak of the above- 
mentioned knowledge as enabling us to know our- 
selves and the world, I assert literature to contain 
the materials which suffice for thus making us 
know ourselves and the world. But it is not by 
any means clear, says he, that after having learnt 
all which ancient and modern literatures have to 
tell us, we have laid a sufficiently broad and deep 
foundation for that criticism of life, that knowl- 
edge of ourselves and the world, which constitutes 
culture. On the contrary, Professor Huxley de- 
clares that he finds himself " wholly unable to ad- 
mit that either nations or individuals will really 
advance, if their outfit draws nothing from the 
stores of physical science. An army without weap- 
ons of precision, and with no particular base of 
operations, might more hopefully enter upon a 
campaign on the Rhine, than a man, devoid of a 
knowledge of what physical science has done in 
the last century, upon a criticism of life." 

This shows how needful it is for those who are 
to discuss any matter together, to have a common 
understanding as to the sense of the terms they 
employ, how needful, and how difficult. What 
Professor Huxley says, implies just the reproach 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 283 

which is so often brought against the stud}' of 
belles left res, as they are called: that the study 
is an elegant one, but slight and ineffectual; a 
smattering of Greek and Latin and other orna- 
mental things, of little use for any one whose 
object is to get at truth, and to be a practical 
man. So, too, M. Renan talks of the " superficial 
humanism " of a school-course which treats us as 
if we were all going to be poets, writers, preachers, 
orators, and he opposes this humanism to positive 
science, or the critical search after truth. And 
there is always a tendency in those who are re- 
monstrating against the predominance of letters 
in education, to understand by letters belles let- 
tres, and by belles lettres a. superficial humanism, 
the opposite of science or true knowledge. 

But when we talk of knowing Greek and Roman 
antiquity, for instance, which is the knowledge 
people have called the humanities, I for my part 
mean a knowledge which is something more than 
a superficial humanism, mainly decorative. " I 
'call all teaching scientific," says Wolf, the critic 
of Homer, " which is systematically laid out and 
followed up to its original sources. For example: 
a knowledge of classical antiquity is scientific 
when the remains of classical antiquity are cor- 
rectly studied in the original languages." There 
can be no doubt that Wolf is perfectly right ; that 
all learning is scientific which is systematically 



284 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

laid out and followed up to its original sources, 
and that a genuine humanism is scientific. 

When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman 
antiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing our- 
selves and the world, I mean more than a knowl- 
edge of so much vocabulary, so much grammar, 
so many portions of authors in the Greek and 
Latin languages, I mean knowing the Greeks and 
Romans, and their life and genius, and what they 
were and did in the world ; what we get from them, 
and what is its value. That, at least, is the ideal ; 
and when we talk of endeavoring to know Greek 
and Roman antiquity, as a help to knowing our- 
selves and the world, we mean endeavoring so to 
know them as to satisfy this ideal, however much 
we may still fall short of it. 

The same also as to knowing our own and other 
modern nations, with the like aim of getting to 
understand ourselves and the world. To know the 
best that has been thought and said by the modern 
nations, is to know, says Professor Huxley, " only 
what modern literatures have to tell us ; it is the 
criticism of life contained in modern literature." 
And yet " the distinctive character of our times," 
he urges, " lies in the vast and constantly increas- 
ing part which is played by natural knowledge." 
And how, therefore, can a man, devoid of knowl- 
edge of what physical science has done in the last 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 285 

century, enter hopefully upon a criticism of mod- 
ern life? 

Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of 
the terms we are using. I talk of knowing the 
best which has been thought and uttered in the 
world ; Professor Huxley says this means know- 
ing literature. Literature is a large word; it may 
mean everything written with letters or printed in 
a book. Euclid's Elements and Newton's Prin- 
cipia are thus literature. All knowledge that 
reaches us through books is literature. But by 
literature Professor Huxley means belles lettres. 
He means to make me say, that knowing the best 
which has been thought and said by the modern 
nations is knowing their belles lettres and no more. 
And this is no sufficient equipment, he argues, for 
a criticism of modern life. But as I do not mean, 
by knowing ancient Rome, knowing merely more 
or less of Latin belles lettres, and taking no ac- 
count of Rome's military, and political, and legal, 
and administrative work in the world; and as, by 
knowing ancient Greece, I understand knowing her 
as the giver of Greek art, and the guide to a free 
and right use of reason and to scientific method, 
and the founder of our mathematics and physics 
and astronomy and biology, I understand know- 
ing her as all this, and not merely knowing certain 
Greek poems, and histories, and treatises, and 
speeches, so as to the knowledge of modern na- 



286 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

tions also. By knowing modern nations, I mean 
not merely knowing their belles lettres, but know- 
ing also what has been done by such men as Co- 
pernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin. " Our an- 
cestors learned," says Professor Huxley, " that the 
earth is the centre of the visible universe, and that 
man is the cynosure of things terrestrial; and 
more especially was it inculcated that the course 
of nature had no fixed order, but that it could be, 
and constantly was, altered." But for us now, 
continues Professor Huxley, " the notions of the 
beginning and the end of the world entertained 
by our forefathers are no longer credible. It is 
very certain that the earth is not the chief body 
in the material universe, and that the world is 
not subordinated to man's use. It is even more 
certain that nature is the expression of a definite 
order, with which nothing interferes." " And 
yet," he cries, " the purely classical education ad- 
vocated by the representatives of the humanists in 
our day gives no inkling of all this ! " 

In due place and time I will just touch upon 
that vexed question of classical education ; but at 
present the question is as to what is meant by 
knowing the best which modern nations have 
thought and said. It is not knowing their belles 
lettres merely which is meant. To know Italian 
belles lettres is not to know Italy, and to know 
English belles lettres is not to know England. 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 287 

Into knowing Italy and England there comes a 
great deal more, Galileo and Newton amongst it. 
The reproach of being a superficial humanism, a 
tincture of belles lettres, may attach rightly 
enough to some other disciplines ; but to the par- 
ticular discipline recommended when I proposed 
knowing the best that has been thought and said 
in the world, it does not apply. In that best I 
certainly include what in modern times has been 
thought and said by the great observers and know- 
ers of nature. 

There is, therefore, really no question between 
Professor Huxley and me as to whether knowing 
the great results of the modern scientific study of 
nature is not required as a part of our culture, as 
well as knowing the products of literature and 
art. But to follow the processes by which those 
results are reached, ought, say the friends of 
physical science, to be made the staple of education 
for the bulk of mankind. And here there does 
arise a question between those whom Professor 
Huxley calls with playful sarcasm " the Levites 
of culture," and those whom the poor humanist 
is sometimes apt to regard as its Nebuchadnezzars. 

The great results of the scientific investigation 
of nature we are agreed upon knowing, but how 
much of our study are we bound to give to the 
processes by which those results are reached ? The 
results have their visible bearing on human life. 



288 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

But all the processes, too, all the items of fact, 
by which those results are reached and established, 
are interesting. All knowledge is interesting to 
a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is inter- 
esting to all men. It is very interesting to know, 
that, from the albuminous white of the egg, the 
chick in the egg gets the materials for its flesh, 
bones, blood, and feathers ; while, from the fatty 
yolk of the egg, it gets the heat and energy which 
enable it at length to break its shell and begin the 
world. It is less interesting, perhaps, but still it 
is interesting, to know that when a taper burns, 
the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water. 
Moreover, it is quite true that the habit of dealing 
with facts, which is given by the study of nature, 
is, as the friends of physical science praise it for 
being, an excellent discipline. The appeal, in the 
study of nature, is constantly to observation and 
experiment; not only is it said that the thing is 
so, but we can be made to see that it is so. Not 
only does a man tell us that when a taper burns 
the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, 
as a man may tell us, if he likes, that Charon is 
punting his ferry-boat on the river Styx, or that 
Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or Mr. Gladstone 
the most admirable of statesmen ; but we are made 
to see that the conversion into carbonic acid and 
water does actually happen. This reality of nat- 
ural knowledge it is, which makes the friends of 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 289 

physical science contrast it, as a knowledge of 
things, with the humanist's knowledge, which is, 
say they, a knowledge of words. And hence Pro- 
fessor Huxley is moved to lay it down that, " for 
the purpose of attaining real culture, an ex- 
clusively scientific education is at least as effectual 
as an exclusively literary education." And a cer- 
tain President of the Section for Mechanical Sci- 
ence in the British Association is, in Scripture 
phrase, " very bold," and declares that if a man, 
in his mental training, " has substituted literature 
and history for natural science, he has chosen the 
less useful alternative." But whether we go these 
lengths or not, we must all admit that in natural 
science the habit gained of dealing with facts is 
a most valuable discipline, and that every one 
should have some experience of it. 

More than this, however, is demanded by the re- 
formers. It is proposed to make the training in 
natural science the main part of education, for 
the great majority of mankind at any rate. And 
here, I confess, I part company with the friends 
of physical science, with whom up to this point 
I have been agreeing. In differing from them, 
however, I wish to proceed with the utmost cau- 
tion and diffidence. The smallness of my own ac- 
quaintance with the disciplines of natural science 
is ever before my mind, and I am fearful of doing 
these disciplines an injustice. The ability and 



290 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

pugnacity of the partisans of natural science make 
them formidable persons to contradict. The tone 
of tentative inquiry, which befits a being of dim 
faculties and bounded knowledge, is the tone I 
would wish to take and not to depart from. At 
present it seems to me, that those who are for 
giving to natural knowledge, as they call it, the 
chief place in the education of the majority of 
mankind, leave one important thing out of their 
account: the constitution of human nature. But 
I put this forward on the strength of some facts 
not at all recondite, very far from it ; facts capa- 
ble of being stated in the simplest possible fashion, 
and to which, if I so state them, the man of 
science will, I am sure, be willing to allow their 
due weight. 

Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly 
can. He can hardly deny, that when we set our- 
selves to enumerate the powers which go to the 
building up of human life, and say that they are 
the power of conduct, the power of intellect and 
knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power 
of social life and manners, he can hardly deny 
that this scheme, though drawn in rough and plain 
lines enough, and not pretending to scientific ex- 
actness, does yet give a fairly true representation 
of the matter. Human nature is built up by 
these powers ; we have the need for them all. 
When we have rightly met and adjusted the 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 291 

claims of them all, we shall then be in a fair way 
for getting soberness and righteousness, with wis- 
dom. This is evident enough, and the friends of 
physical science would admit it. 

But perhaps they may not have sufficiently ob- 
served another thing: namely, that the several 
powers just mentioned are not isolated, but there 
is, in the generality of mankind, a perpetual tend- 
ency to relate them one to another in divers ways. 
With one such way of relating them I am partic- 
ularly concerned now. Following our instinct for 
intellect and knowledge, we acquire pieces of 
knowledge; and presently, in the generality of 
men, there arises the desire to relate these pieces 
of knowledge to our sense for conduct, to our 
sense for beauty, and there is weariness and dis- 
satisfaction if the desire is baulked. Now in this 
desire lies, I think, the strength of that hold which 
letters have upon us. 

All knowledge is, as I said just now, interest- 
ing; and even items of knowledge which from the 
nature of the case cannot .well be related, but 
must stand isolated in our thoughts, have their 
interest. Even lists of exceptions have their in- 
terest. If we are studying Greek accents, it is 
interesting to know that pals and pas, and some 
other monosyllables of the same form of declen- 
sion, do not take the circumflex upon the last 
syllable of the genitive plural, but vary, in this 



292 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

respect, from the common rule. If we are study- 
ing physiology, it is interesting to know that the 
pulmonary artery carries dark blood and the pul- 
monary vein carries bright blood, departing in 
this respect from the common rule for the division 
of labor between the veins and the arteries. But 
every one knows how we seek naturally to combine 
the pieces of our knowledge together, to bring them 
under general rules, to relate them to principles; 
and how unsatisfactory and tiresome it would 
be to go on for ever learning lists of exceptions, 
or accumulating items of fact which must stand 
isolated. 

Well, that same need of relating our knowl- 
edge, which operates here within the sphere of 
our knowledge itself, we shall find operating, also, 
outside that sphere. We experience, as we go on 
learning and knowing, the vast majority of us 
experience, the need of relating what we have 
learnt and known to the sense which we have 
in us for conduct, to the sense which we have in us 
for beauty. 

A certain Greek prophetess of Mantineia in 
Arcadia, Diotima by name, once explained to the 
philosopher Socrates that love, and impulse, and 
bent of all kinds, is, in fact, nothing else but the 
desire in men that good should for ever be present 
to them. This desire for good, DJotima assured 
Socrates, is our fundamental desire, of which 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 293 

fundamental desire every impulse in us is only 
some one particular form. And therefore this 
fundamental desire it is, I suppose, this desire 
in men that good should be for ever present to 
them, which acts in us when we feel the impulse 
for relating our knowledge to our sense for con- 
duct and to our sense for beauty. At any rate, 
with men in general the instinct exists. Such is 
human nature. And the instinct, it will be ad- 
mitted, is innocent, and human nature is pre- 
served by our following the lead of its innocent 
instincts. Therefore, in seeking to gratify this in- 
stinct in question, we are following the instinct 
of self-preservation in humanity. 

But, no doubt, some kinds of knowledge cannot 
be made to directly serve the instinct in question, 
cannot be directly related to the sense for beauty, 
to the sense for conduct. These are instrument- 
knowledges ; they lead on to other knowledges, 
which can. A man who passes his life in instru- 
ment-knowledges is a specialist. They may be 
invaluable as instruments to something beyond, 
for those who have the gift thus to employ them ; 
and they may be disciplines in themselves wherein 
it is useful for every one to have some schooling. 
But it is inconceivable that the generality of men 
should pass all their mental life with Greek ac- 
cents or with formal logic. My friend Professor 
Sylvester, who is one of the first mathematicians 



294 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

in the world, holds transcendental doctrines as to 
the virtue of mathematics, but those doctrines are 
not for common men. In the very Senate House 
and heart of our English Cambridge I once ven- 
tured, though not without an apology for my 
profaneness, to hazard the opinion that for the 
majority of mankind a little of mathematics, even, 
goes a long way. Of course this is quite con- 
sistent with their being of immense importance as 
an instrument to something else ; but it is the few 
who have the aptitude for thus using them, not the 
bulk of mankind. 

The natural sciences do not, however, stand on 
the same footing with these instrument-knowl- 
edges. Experience shows us that the generality of 
men will find more interest in learning that, when 
a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic 
acid and water, or in learning the explanation of 
the phenomenon of dew, or in learning how the 
circulation of the blood is carried on, than they 
find in learning that the genitive plural of pais 
and pas does not take the circumflex on the 
termination. And one piece of natural knowl- 
edge is added to another, and others are added to 
that, and at last we come to propositions so inter- 
esting as Mr. Darwin's famous proposition that 
" our ancestor was a hairy quadruped furnished 
with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in 
his habits." Or we come to propositions of such 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 295 

reach and magnitude as those which Professor 
Huxley delivers, when he says that the notions of 
our forefathers about the beginning and the end 
of the world were all wrong, and that nature is 
the expression of a definite order with which noth- 
ing interferes. 

Interesting, indeed, these results of science are, 
important they are, and we should all of us be 
acquainted with them. But what I now wish you 
to mark is, that we are still, when they are pro- 
pounded to us and we receive them, we are still 
in the sphere of intellect and knowledge. And 
for the generality of men there will be found, 
I say, to arise, when they have duly taken in the 
proposition that their ancestor was " a hairy 
quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, 
probably arboreal in his habits," there will be 
found to arise an invincible desire to relate this 
proposition to the sense in us for conduct, and 
to the sense in us for beauty. But this the men 
of science will not do for us, and will hardly even 
profess to do. They will give us other pieces of 
knowledge, other facts, about other animals and 
their ancestors, or about plants, or about stones, 
or about stars ; and they may finally bring us to 
those great " general conceptions of the universe, 
which are forced upon us all," says Professor 
Huxley, " by the progress of physical science." 
But still it will be knowledge only which they give 



296 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

us ; knowledge not put for us into relation with 
our sense for conduct, our sense for beauty, and 
touched with emotion by being so put ; not thus 
put for us, and therefore, to the majority of man- 
kind, after a certain while, unsatisfying, wearying. 
Not to the born naturalist, I admit. But what 
do we mean by a born naturalist? We mean a 
man in whom the zeal for observing nature is so 
uncommonly strong and eminent, that it marks 
him off from the bulk of mankind. Such a man 
will pass his life happily in collecting natural 
knowledge and reasoning upon it, and will ask for 
nothing, or hardly anything, more. I have heard 
it said that the sagacious and admirable naturalist 
whom we lost not very long ago, Mr. Darwin, once 
owned to a friend that for his part he did not 
experience the necessity for two things which most 
men find so necessary to them, religion and 
poetry ; science and the domestic affections, he 
thought, were enough. To a born naturalist, I 
can well understand that this should seem so. So 
absorbing is his occupation with nature, so strong 
his love for his occupation, that he goes on ac- 
quiring natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, 
and has little time or inclination for thinking 
about getting it related to the desire in man for 
conduct, the desire in man for beauty. He relates 
it to them for himself as he goes along, so far 
as he feels the need; and he draws from the do- 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 297 

mestic affections all the additional solace neces- 
sar}'. But then Darwins are extremely rare. An- 
other great and admirable master of natural 
knowledge, Faraday, was a Sandemanian. That 
is to say, he related his knowledge to his instinct 
for conduct and to his instinct for beauty, b}- the 
aid of that respectable Scottish sectary, Robert 
Sandeman. And so strong, in general, is the de- 
mand of religion and poetry to have their share 
in a man, to associate themselves with his know- 
ing, and to relieve and rejoice it, that, probably, 
for one man amongst us with the disposition to do 
as Darwin did in this respect, there are at least 
fifty with the disposition to do as Faraday. 

Education lays hold upon us, in fact, by satis- 
fying this demand. Professor Huxley holds up to 
scorn mediaeval education, with its neglect of the 
knowledge of nature, its poverty even of literary 
studies, its formal logic devoted to " showing how 
and why that which the Church said was true 
must be true." But the great mediaeval Universi- 
ties were not brought into being, we may be sure, 
by the zeal for giving a jejune and contemptible 
education. Kings have been their nursing fathers, 
and queens have been their nursing mothers, but 
not for this. The mediaeval Universities came into 
being, because the supposed knowledge, delivered 
by Scripture and the Church, so deeply engaged 
men's hearts, by so simply, easily, and powerfully 



298 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

relating itself to their desire for conduct, their 
desire for beauty. All other knowledge was dom- 
inated by this supposed knowledge and was sub- 
ordinated to it, because of the surpassing strength 
of the hold which it gained upon the affections of 
men, by allying itself profoundly with their sense 
for conduct, their sense for beauty. 

But now, says Professor Huxley, conceptions 
of the universe fatal to the notions held by our 
forefathers have been forced upon us by physical 
science. Grant to him that they are thus fatal, 
that the new conceptions must and will soon be- 
come current everywhere, and that every one will 
finally perceive them to be fatal to the beliefs of 
our forefathers. The need of humane letters, as 
they are truly called, because they serve the para- 
mount desire in men that good should be for ever 
present to them, the need of humane letters, to 
establish a relation between the new conceptions, 
and our instinct for beauty, our instinct for con- 
duct, is only the more visible. The Middle Age 
could do without humane letters, as it could do 
without the study of nature, because its supposed 
knowledge was made to engage its emotions so 
powerfully. Grant that the supposed knowledge 
disappears, its power of being made to engage the 
emotions will of course disappear along with it, 
but the emotions themselves, and their claim to 
be engaged and satisfied, will remain. Now if 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 299 

we find by experience that humane letters have an 
undeniable power of engaging the emotions, the 
importance of humane letters in a man's training 
becomes not less, but greater, in proportion to 
the success of modern science in extirpating what 
it calls " mediaeval thinking." 

Have humane letters, then, have poetry and elo- 
quence, the power here attributed to them of en- 
gaging the emotions, and do they exercise it? 
And if they have it and exercise it, how do they 
exercise it, so as to exert an influence upon man's 
sense for conduct, his sense for beauty? Finally, 
even if they both can and do exert an influence 
upon the senses in question, how are they to relate 
to them the results, the modern results, of nat- 
ural science? All these questions may be asked. 
First, have poetry and eloquence the power of 
calling out the emotions? The appeal is to ex- 
perience. Experience shows that for the vast 
majority of men, for mankind in general, they 
have the power. Next, do they exercise it? They 
do. But then, how do they exercise it so as to 
affect man's sense for conduct, his sense for 
beauty? And this is perhaps a case for applying 
the Preacher's words : " Though a man labor to 
seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea, farther, 
though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he 
not be able to find it." 1 Why should it be one 
1 Ecclesiastea, viii. 17. [Author's note.] 



300 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say, 
" Patience is a virtue," and quite another thing, 
in its effect upon the emotions, to say with Homer, 

yapMoipai Oujtov Beffar 



" for an enduring heart have the destinies ap- 
pointed to the children of men"? Why should 
it be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions, 
to say with the philosopher Spinoza, Felicitas in 
eo consistit quod homo suum esse conservare 
potest " Man's happiness consists in his being 
able to preserve his own essence," and quite an- 
other thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say 
with the Gospel, " What is a man advantaged, 
if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, for- 
feit himself? " How does this difference of effect 
arise? I cannot tell, and I am not much con- 
cerned to know ; the important thing is that it 
does arise, and that we can profit by it. But 
how, finally, are poetry and eloquence to exercise 
the power of relating the modern results of nat- 
ural science to man's instinct for conduct, his 
instinct for beauty? And here again I answer 
that I do not know how they will exercise it, but 
that they can and will exercise it I am sure. I 
do not mean that modern philosophical poets and 
modern philosophical moralists are to come and 
relate for us, in express terms, the results of 
1 Iliad, xxiv. 49. [Author's note.] 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 301 

modern scientific research to our instinct for con- 
duct, our instinct for beauty. But I mean that 
we shall find, as a matter of experience, if we 
know the best that has been thought and uttered 
in the world, we shall find that the art and poetry 
and eloquence of men who lived, perhaps, long 
ago, who had the most limited natural knowledge, 
who had the most erroneous conceptions about 
many important matters, we shall find that this 
art, and poetry, and eloquence, have in fact not 
only the power of refreshing and delighting us, 
they have also the power, such is the strength 
and worth, in essentials, of their authors' criti- 
cism of life, they have a fortifying, and ele- 
vating, and quickening, and suggestive power, 
capable of wonderfully helping us to relate the 
results of modern science to our need for conduct, 
our need for beauty. Homer's conceptions of the 
physical universe were, I imagine, grotesque; but 
really, under the shock of hearing from modern 
science that " the world is not subordinated to 
man's use, and that man is not the cynosure of 
things terrestrial," I could, for my own part, de- 
sire no better comfort than Homer's line which 
I quoted just now, 

yap Moipat Qvpor Oeffav 



" for an enduring heart have the destinies ap- 
pointed to the children of men " ! 



302 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

And the more that men's minds are cleared, the 
more that the results of science are frankly ac- 
cepted, the more that poetry and eloquence come 
to be received and studied as what in truth they 
really are, the criticism of life by gifted men, 
alive and active with extraordinary power at an 
unusual number of points ; so much the more 
will the value of humane letters, and of art also, 
which is an utterance having a like kind of power 
with theirs, be felt and acknowledged, and their 
place in education be secured. 

Let us therefore, all of us, avoid indeed as 
much as possible any invidious comparison be- 
tween the merits of humane letters, as means of 
education, and the merits of the natural sciences. 
But when some President of a Section for Mechan- 
ical Science insists on making the comparison, and 
tells us that " he who in his training has substi- 
tuted literature and history for natural science 
has chosen the less useful alternative," let us make 
answer to him that the student of humane letters 
only, will, at least, know also the great general 
conceptions brought in by modern physical sci- 
ence ; for science, as Professor Huxley says, forces 
them upon us all. But the student of the natural 
sciences only, will, by our very hypothesis, know 
nothing of humane letters ; not to mention that 
in setting himself to be perpetually accumulating 
natural knowledge, he sets himself to do what 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 303 

only specialists have in general the gift for doing 
genially. And so he will probably be unsatisfied, 
or at any rate incomplete, and even more incom- 
plete than the student of humane letters only. 

I once mentioned in a school-report, how a 
young man in one of our English training colleges 
having to paraphrase the passage in Macbeth be- 
ginning, 

Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ? 

turned this line into, " Can you not wait upon the 
lunatic? " And I remarked what a curious state 
of things it would be, if every pupil of our na- 
tional schools knew, let us say, that the moon is 
two thousand one hundred and sixty miles in dia- 
meter, and thought at the same time that a good 
paraphrase for 

Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseased ? 

was, " Can you not wait upon the lunatic? " If 
one is driven to choose, I think I would rather 
have a young person ignorant about the moon's 
diameter, but aware that " Can you not wait upon 
the lunatic? " is bad, than a young person whose 
education had been such as to manage things the 
other way. 

Or to go higher than the pupils of our national 
schools. I have in my mind's eye a member of 



304 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

our British Parliament who comes to travel here 
in America, who afterwards relates his travels, 
and who shows a really masterly knowledge of the 
geology of this great country and of its mining 
capabilities, but who ends by gravely suggesting 
that the United States should borrow a prince 
from our Royal Family, and should make him 
their king, and should create a House of Lords 
of great landed proprietors after the pattern of 
ours ; and then America, he thinks, would have 
her future happily and perfectly secured. Surely, 
in this case, the President of the Section for 
Mechanical Science would himself hardly say that 
our member of Parliament, by concentrating him- 
self upon geology and mineralogy, and so on, and 
not attending to literature and history, had 
" chosen the more useful alternative." 

If then there is to be separation and option be- 
tween humane letters on the one hand, and the 
natural sciences on the other, the great majority 
of mankind, all who have not exceptional and 
overpowering aptitudes for the study of nature, 
would do well, I cannot but think, to choose to 
be educated in humane letters rather than in the 
natural sciences. Letters will call out their being 
at more points, will make them live more. 

I said that before I ended I would just touch 
on the question of classical education, and I will 
keep my word. Even if literature is to retain a 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 305 

large place in our education, yet Latin and Greek, 
say the friends of progress, will certainly have 
to go. Greek is the grand offender in the eyes 
of these gentlemen. The attackers of the estab- 
lished course of study think that against Greek, at 
any rate, they have irresistible arguments. Lit- 
erature may perhaps be needed in education, they 
say ; but why on earth should it be Greek lit- 
erature? Why not French or German? Nay, 
" has not an Englishman models in his own lit- 
erature of every kind of excellence? " As before, 
it is not on any weak pleadings of my own that 
I rely for convincing the gainsayers ; it is on the 
constitution of human nature itself, and on the 
instinct of self-preservation in humanity. The 
instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as 
surely as the instinct for knowledge is set there, or 
the instinct for conduct. If the instinct for beauty 
is served by Greek literature and art as it is 
served by no other literature and art, we may 
trust to the instinct of self-preservation in hu- 
manity for keeping Greek as part of our culture. 
We may trust to it for even making the study 
of Greek more prevalent than it is now. Greek will 
come, I hope, some day to be studied more ration- 
ally than at present ; but it will be increasingly 
studied as men increasingly feel the need in them 
for beauty, and how powerfully Greek art and 
Greek literature can serve this need. Women will 



306 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

again study Greek, as Lady Jane Grey did; I 
believe that in that chain of forts, with which the 
fair host of the Amazons are now engirdling our 
English universities, I find that here in America, 
in colleges like Smith College in Massachusetts, 
and Vassar College in the State of New York, and 
in the happy families of the mixed universities 
out West, they are studying it already. 

Defuit una mihi symmetria prisca, " The an- 
tique symmetry was the one thing wanting to me," 
said Leonardo da Vinci ; and he was an Italian. 
I will not presume to speak for the Americans, 
but I am sure that, in the Englishman, the want 
of this admirable symmetry of the Greeks is a 
thousand times more great and crying than in any 
Italian. The results of the want show themselves 
most glaringly, perhaps, in our architecture, but 
they show themselves, also, in all our art A Fit de- 
tails strictly combined, in view of a large general 
result nobly conceived;^ that is just the beautiful 
symmetria prisca of the Greeks, and it is just 
where we English fail, where all our art fails. 
Striking ideas we have, and well-executed details 
we have ; but that high symmetry which, with sat- 
isfying and delightful effect, combines them, we 
seldom or never have. The glorious beauty of 
the Acropolis at Athens did not come from single 
fine things stuck about on that hill, a statue here, 
a gateway there; no, it arose from all things 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 307 

being perfectly combined for a supreme total ef- 
fect. What must not an Englishman feel about 
our deficiencies in this respect, as the sense for 
beauty, whereof this symmetry is an essential ele- 
ment, awakens and strengthens within him ! what 
will not one day be his respect and desire for 
Greece and its tymmetria prisca, when the scales 
drop from his eyes as he walks the London streets, 
and he sees such a lesson in meanness as the 
Strand, for instance, in its true deformity ! But 
here we are coming to our friend Mr. Ruskin's 
province, and I will not intrude upon it, for he 
is its very sufficient guardian. 

And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing 
in favor of the humanities the natural and neces- 
sary stream of things, which seemed against them 
when we started. The " hairy quadruped fur- 
nished with a tail and pointed ears, probably 
arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried 
hidden in his nature, apparently, something des- 
tined to develop into a necessity for humane let- 
ters. Nay, more; we seem finally to be even led 
to the further conclusion that our hairy ancestor 
carried in his nature, also, a necessit}- for Greek. 

And therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really 
think that humane letters are in much actual 
danger of being thrust out from their leading place 
in education, in spite of the array of authorities 
against them at this moment. So long as human 



308 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

nature is what it is, their attractions will remain 
irresistible. As with Greek, so with letters gen- 
erally: they will some day come, we may hope, to 
be studied more rationally, but they will not lose 
their place. What will happen will rather be that 
there will be crowded into education other matters 
besides, far too many ; there will be, perhaps, a 
period of unsettlement and confusion and false 
tendency ; but letters will not in the end lose their 
leading place. If they lose it for a time, they 
will get it back again. We shall be brought back 
to them by our wants and aspirations. And a 
poor humanist may possess his soul in patience, 
neither strive nor cry, admit the energy and 
brilliancy of the partisans of physical science, and 
their present favor with the public, to be far 
greater than his own, and still have a happy faith 
that the nature of things works silently on behalf 
of the studies which he loves, and that, while we 
shall all have to acquaint ourselves with the great 
results reached by modern science, and to give our- 
selves as much training in its disciplines as we 
can conveniently carry, yet the majority of men 
will always require humane letters ; and so much 
the more, as they have the more and the greater 
results of science to relate to the need in man for 
conduct, and to the need in him for beauty. 



THE STUDY OF ART 1 

JOHN CAIRD 

LAST year, as some of you may remember, I 
called your attention to the fact that, amongst 
the many projected improvements in our Uni- 
versity system, one of the most important is the 
foundation, if not of a School, at least of a Chair 
of History, and I took occasion to make some re- 
marks on the nature and uses of the study of his- 
tory. Another and in some respects not less im- 
portant branch of study is equally conspicuous 
by its absence from our curriculum. In the sister 
University of Edinburgh there exists a Chair of 
the Fine Arts, and also a Chair specially devoted 
to one of these Arts, that of Music. Here, though 
the study of Art has a special bearing on many 
of those industries to which Glasgow owes its 
wealth, and though there are many indications 
that in this great community the love of Art and 
Song is not an extinct or undeveloped susceptibil- 
ity, we have not hitherto been so highly favored. 
In selecting, therefore, a topic for the present 

1 An address delivered to the University of Glasgow on No- 
vember 6, 1886. 

309 



310 JOHN CAIRD 

address, I have thought that, partly because it 
might serve to draw attention to this gap in our 
educational system, partly because of the interest 
of the subject in itself, I could do nothing better 
than offer you a few remarks on the study of Art. 
If the higher education ought to embrace all 
departments of human culture, there is besides 
science, philosophy, languages and literatures 
besides those studies which are already included 
in our University curriculum one other impor- 
tant department which should not be ignored, viz., 
that which is somewhat vaguely designated by the 
word " art." The study of nature is not ex- 
hausted when it has been viewed in those aspects 
of which the scientific investigator takes cogni- 
zance. Through the forms, colors, sounds of the 
material world certain intuitions and emotions arc 
awakened in us which pertain strictly, neither to 
the intellectual nor the moral, but to what we 
term the aesthetic side of our nature. And in 
minds of special susceptibility these ideas and 
emotions crave for expression in a class of works 
capable of calling forth kindred thoughts and feel- 
ings in those who contemplate them. In the pro- 
ductions of the great masters of the plastic, pic- 
torial, and other arts are embodied ideas and ex- 
periences of an altogether peculiar kind, appealing 
in a special way to our capacities of admiration, 
tenderness, aspiration, awe; touching the springs 



THE STUDY OF ART 311 

of passionate and pathetic emotion within the 
breast, and capable of lifting us above ourselves 
and the conditions of our common life into an 
ideal world of beauty, which has an existence not 
less true than what we call the real world for 
those who have the power to perceive it. 

But when we claim for art a place in our scheme 
of education, it must be admitted that the function 
of education with reference to art is subject to 
one obvious limitation which does not apply to 
the other branches of knowledge. Languages, sci- 
ence, philosophy, history, can be taught by ex- 
perts, and, with ordinary diligence, every fairly 
intelligent pupil can become a proficient in them ; 
but no amount of culture, no intellectual applica- 
tion however unwearied, can make a man an artist. 
Proficiency in this case involves an element which 
the best cultivation cannot communicate. There 
is indeed a part, and that a necessary part, of 
the artist's equipment which can be taught and 
acquired. To draw, paint, model, to be master 
of the various methods of execution in the pic- 
torial and plastic arts, are not accomplishments 
which come by nature or can be attained without 
long and patient study and practice. Betwixt the 
fine arts and the industrial arts, there is a wide 
gap, but they agree in this, that it requires a 
long and laborious apprenticeship before the 
learner can become a skilled artificer. The tech- 



312 JOHN CAIRD 

nical skill, for example, which is involved in the 
reproduction by the landscape painter on his 
canvas of the facts of form, of light and shade, 
of color local and reflected, of arrangement and 
grouping of objects so as to give unity of effect, 
is so great, implies the knowledge of conditions 
so many, so subtle and delicate, that it can be 
fully appreciated only by a critic who is himself 
an expert in the art he criticizes. So large an 
element of success does this technical part of an 
artist's equipment constitute, that it is apt to 
assume in the view of experts an exaggerated im- 
portance, if not to become the sole criterion of 
merit. The scorn of popular and uninstructed 
judgment amongst artists and connoisseurs, and 
the tendency of art-criticism to become a sort 
of esoteric mystery, turning on special knowledge 
and expressing itself in technical jargon, is due to 
the fact that success in art does imply, as much 
as success in mathematics or chemistry, a special 
knowledge and a special skill in the application 
of it, which can only be attained by severe in- 
tellectual toil. Nevertheless they can be attained, 
and they require in order to their attainment 
qualities and aptitudes no more rare or excep- 
tional than those which are possessed by the 
average student in other lines of culture. If this 
were all, there would be no reason why art should 
not rank with the other departments of academic 



THE STUDY OF ART 313 

culture, or why a college should not turn out poets, 
painters, musicians, sculptors, just as it produces 
scholars, doctors, lawyers, divines, in regular and 
sufficient supply to meet the world's demand for 
them. 

But the difficulty of making art a branch of 
academic culture is that it presupposes in the 
pupil a capacity which is not universal, or rather 
which is so rare as to be practically arbitrary. 
Poets are not manufactured articles. No method- 
ical discipline, hoAvever severe and prolonged, can 
communicate to the spirit that spark of heaven's 
fire which transforms talent into genius, and en- 
dows intelligence with that nameless, indefinable 
insight and productive power which is the pre- 
rogative of the genuine artist. 

In the case of other professions, the function 
of education is a very comprehensive one, because 
there is room in these professions for practitioners 
of almost every order of intellect above the lowest. 
The world's work would not be done, the demand 
would far exceed the supply, if it did not content 
itself often with second or third-rate lawyers, 
physicians, preachers, etc. But the peculiarity 
of the artistic vocation is that there is no use in 
it for mediocrity. Houses to live in, raiment to 
wear, we all must have, and if we cannot afford 
to pay for the best, we must needs be content with 
an inferior and cheaper article. But the world has 



314 JOHN CAIRD 

no need for second-rate poems or pictures. It 
would not be physically or mentally a loser, if all 
the producers of such articles turned their at- 
tention to an honest trade. The soul of man is 
not rendered in any sense richer by reading dog- 
gerel verse or looking at vulgar portraits and 
feeble or indifferent attempts at figure or land- 
scape painting. Inferior technique it may well 
afford to pardon, if one touch of genius inspires 
its product. The simplest song or ballad that 
has in it the ring of genuine inspiration, the 
rudest wood-cut in which a touch of imaginative 
feeling or inventive power can be discerned, the 
roughly-wrought clay cup or vase in whose form 
and modelling a genuine instinct for beauty can 
be traced these and the like constitute a real 
addition, however slight, to the world's spiritual 
wealth. But, to make it such, some scintillation 
of the higher incommunicable element it must pos- 
sess. And if elimination could be made of all pro- 
ductions which are absolutely destitute of it, if a 
holocaust could be made of all the vast accumu- 
lated lumber of bad or indifferent poems, paintings, 
and other so-called books of art that occupy space 
on this globe at the present moment, it is far less 
than the whole truth to say that the world would 
be no loser by the catastrophe. 

If then there be any truth in these remarks, 
how can we claim for art a place amongst the 



THE STUDY OF ART 315 

other branches of academic culture? If all that 
can be taught is the technical part, skill in the 
use of the tools of art (and this, of course, it is 
not the province of a University to teach), and 
if the indispensable qualification for the vocation 
of an artist is one which instruction can never 
communicate, is not this tantamount to saying that 
art-culture is incapable of becoming an element of 
the higher education? In answer to this question, 
I shall ask your attention to one or two observa- 
tions on the possibility and uses of the study of 
art. 

I. In the first place, it is to be observed that, 
though education cannot make men artists, it may 
help most men to enjoy and appreciate works of 
art. It is not inconsistent with what I have said 
to maintain that, though the power to produce 
may be rare, the power to relish is all but uni- 
versal. Perhaps, indeed, careful reflection might 
suggest doubt as to any hard and fast distinction 
such as I have just referred to between the higher 
and lower orders of mind. At any rate, it cannot 
be questioned that the power to recognize and 
respond to what is true or beautiful in the prod- 
ucts of human thought may be possessed by multi- 
tudes who are destitute of the power to create 
or originate them. 

In philosophy and science the men who stand 
peerless for speculative power or for capacity 



316 JOHN CAIRD 

to penetrate the arcana of nature have been few, 
but thousands in their own and every successive 
age have grasped their ideas, apprehended and 
verified the discoveries they brought to light. The 
immortal masters of art and song whose names 
live for ever on the roll of fame it would not take 
long to count, but the very greatness their names 
have attained has arisen from the fact that they 
spoke to feelings and intuitions that are universal. 
They would have had no power to charm and thrill 
the minds of men, if they had not interpreted them 
to themselves, if there were no slumbering ele- 
ment in the human soul which they had the ca- 
pacity to awake, no dim, inarticulate thoughts and 
emotions for which they found a voice. The 
secret of their world-wide undying empire lay in 
this, that the living fire of their genius found a 
fuel of its own waiting to be kindled in the com- 
mon heart, that the creative imagination in them 
spoke to a dormant imagination which it elicited 
and developed in the mind and spirit of humanity. 
On this point I cannot dwell further than to say, 
that human experience is full of indications of 
what I may call the universality of the art-instinct. 
The capacity to appreciate the higher kinds of 
art may be the privilege of the initiated, but even 
amongst the ignorant and uneducated, and at the 
earliest stages of human progress, the art-instinct, 
rude, untutored, blind, it may be, manifests its 



THE STUDY OF ART 317 

presence. The faculty to which art appeals, the 
pictorial and poetic imagination, the power to 
glorify the hard, external facts of outward ex- 
perience, and to create out of the forms of sense 
an ideal world of wonder and delight, quickens 
within the mind at the first dawnings of intelli- 
gence. The rough discipline of life may all too 
soon extinguish the idealizing impulse, but there 
is a sense in which it may be said that every child 
is an unconscious poet and artist, and that song 
comes earlier than articulate speech. In its mo- 
ment of exuberant joy fulness, disporting itself 
in summer hours amidst flowers and sunshine, you 
will hear the child crooning to itself a low murmur 
of baby music that gives vent to emotions for 
which it has as yet no other medium of expres- 
sion. We know, too, how vivid is the idealizing 
faculty in childhood its capacity to infuse vital- 
ity and consciousness into the lifeless objects that 
surround it, to work up with a kind of incipient 
dramatic instinct little scenes and plots out of the 
barest materials ; and how, as it wanders by wood 
and stream, prattles to the running brook, apos- 
trophizes the sunbeam or runs to catch the flying 
shadow, it can create for itself a little world of 
imagination that will charm it for hours and days 
into forgetfulness of the real world in which it 
lives. 

And the same thing is true of the infancy of 



318 JOHN CAIRD 

the race, and of the undeveloped intelligence at all 
stages of civilization. Wherever men attempt to 
rise above mere utility and make some effort, how- 
ever feeble, to adorn and beautify life, the art- 
instinct betrays itself. The savage who tattooes 
his limbs, stains his person with streaks of color 
or decorates it with feathers and shells, or carves 
rude imitation of animal forms on club or spear or 
paddle, is manifesting the germs of the same tend- 
ency which expresses itself in the delicate fabrics 
and harmonious colors which set off the charms of 
the modern beauty, in the gems which sparkle on 
her fingers and the jewels and flowers that adorn 
her hair. The buffalo or tiger-skin with which the 
Indian adorns his wigwam, the rude trophy con- 
structed from the spoils of the chase which he 
hangs on its walls, are low developments of the 
same instinct which fills our modern mansions with 
art-treasures, our rooms and picture galleries 
with the masterpieces of painting or sculpture. 

Racial peculiarities or historic and other con- 
ditions may keep this instinct at a low point of de- 
velopment, or for a time in some directions wholly 
suppress it. In our own country, for instance, 
for reasons which we need not pause to investigate, 
the artistic side of our nature, so far as the pic- 
torial and plastic arts are concerned, has, till 
lately, only feebly and rarely manifested itself; 
but other expressions of its presence have not been 



THE STUDY OF ART 319 

lacking. As one amongst ourselves, 1 following in 
the footsteps of Walter Scott, and with a kindred 
sympathetic insight into the nobler elements of 
the Scottish character, has taught us, in the bal- 
lads and songs, the folk-lore and fairy legends of 
our country simple, inartificial, naive in form, 
yet instinct with the pathos and power, the yearn- 
ing after the invisible and the ideal, the wonder 
and awe and mystery of a genuine imaginative 
inspiration, in these spontaneous expressions of 
the genius of the Scottish people, we have the 
proof that amongst a rude and unlettered race, 
and in a social state only a slight remove from 
barbarism, the presence of an unmistakable sensi- 
bility for art may be found. 

But in this as in other cases, instinctive feeling 
needs and is capable of cultivation and discipline. 
That which is implanted in man's nature only as 
an unreflecting intuition must, in order to its per- 
fection, undergo the discipline of education. The 
spontaneity of nature, though sometimes and in 
the case of rarely gifted souls it may excel the 
labored productions of art, is limited in its range 
of achievement, and amongst ordinary men the 
mere natural instinct for beauty will carry them 
but a little way in appreciating what is really 
worthy of admiration. In what are called dis- 
tinctively the Fine Arts an uninstructed taste is, 
1 The late Professor Veitch. [Author's note. 1 



320 JOHN CAIRD 

in a great majority of instances, bad taste, and 
beyond a certain very limited range it will remain 
insensible, not only to what belongs to the tech- 
nique of art, to skill, refinement, and subtlety of 
execution, to delicacy of drawing, coloring, model- 
ling, to the things, in short, which charm the ex- 
pert, but even to the inner elements of grandeur 
or beauty of conception, of which technical skill 
is only the vehicle. In the region of feeling we 
often indulge the thought that taste is a purely 
arbitrary thing, and that pleasure or delight is the 
only test of merit. If a man is pleased in a pic- 
ture by flashy vulgarity, or coarse literalism, or 
weak sentimentality, or clever sleight-of-hand, at 
which a more refined taste shudders, he will not 
seldom express unhesitating commendation with- 
out a suspicion of its injustice; and, if everything 
rests on feeling, who is to dispute his verdict? 

The answer is, that art, no more than morality 
or religion, is a purely subjective and arbitrary 
thing. Without going into the metaphysics of 
the subject, which is at present impossible, I ven- 
ture to pronounce, that in the one case as in the 
others, there are principles and standards of 
judgment to which individual opinion must learn 
to bow, and that we are no more bound to accept 
in art the verdict of undisciplined feeling than 
the Christian moralist is bound to accept, as of 
equal validity with his own ethical judgments, the 



321 

crude moral notions of primitive times and bar- 
barous races. What the canons of art criticism 
are, by what methods of instruction the educator 
is to proceed in developing and training to a re- 
fined and rational activity the mind and judgment 
of his pupil, it is not for me to pronounce. 
Enough, perhaps, has been said to show that there 
is nothing in the nature of art to render the study 
of it impossible as a branch of general culture. 

II. But granting that art is a possible study, 
is it also a useful one? What benefits inward or 
outward is the student to gain from it? In answer 
to this question, I shall now say a word or two 
as to the uses of art as an element of human 
culture. 

It would seem at first sight that an inquiry 
into the uses of art involves a contradiction in 
terms. What we seek in a work of art is not 
instruction or information, not material or other 
advantages, but simply pleasure or enjoyment. 
Music, painting, poetry, and the other fine arts, 
whatever they do for the embellishment or decora- 
tion of human life, obviously contribute nothing 
to the supply of its practical necessities. They 
may form the luxury of idleness or the innocent 
pastime of our hours of leisure, but in themselves 
they have no moral purpose or practical utility ; 
and whenever pleasure clashes with profit, they 
may even become noxious diverting, as they do, 



JOHN CAIRD 

time and thought from the serious work or sterner 
tasks of life. 

Moreover, the view of the function of art which 
relegates it to the province of the ornamental as 
distinguished from the useful, seems to be sanc- 
tioned not merely by popular thought, but also 
by philosophic theory. Amongst those who specu- 
late on the subject the accepted theory seems to 
be that which is embodied in the phrase, " Art for 
art's sake," meaning by that, that art is to be 
prosecuted for itself, and not for any ulterior 
end. The end of a work of art is not to point 
a moral or to convey a lesson in science or philos- 
ophy, or even to soften the manners and refine 
the habits of society; but to be, in and for itself, 
a source of delight. It appeals to what has been 
called the " play impulse " in human nature, to 
the spontaneous enjoyment of activities which 
men put forth, not for the wages they are to earn 
or the benefits they are to procure thereby, but 
simply because they find in the free play of their 
energies an immediate satisfaction and joy. 
When the sympathetic observer stands in rapt ad- 
miration before some great masterpiece of paint- 
ing or sculpture, or when ear and soul yield them- 
selves up to the charm of the great composer's 
art in song, cantata, opera, oratorio, and vague, 
undefined emotions, passionate or pathetic, are 
awakened within the breast, no thought of ulterior 



THE STUDY OF ART 323 

use or profit crosses the mind. Its experience is 
that of absorption in present, immediate enjoy- 
ment. And, on the other hand, if we think of 
the attitude of the artist's mind in producing, 
equally foreign to it is the aim at anything beyond 
the work itself. He paints or sings or writes 
simply because the creative impulse is upon him, 
and he cannot choose but give it vent ; because a 
dream of beauty has taken possession of his soul, 
and it is joy or rapture to him to express it. 

But whilst this view of the essentially non- 
utilitarian character of art may be freely con- 
ceded, there is nothing inconsistent with the con- 
cession in claiming for works of art a higher func- 
tion than that of recreation or amusement, or 
in the assertion that they contribute in no slight 
or inappreciable measure to the formation of char- 
acter and the intellectual and moral education of 
the community. In making this claim, however, 
it must be admitted that, in one point of view, the 
principle of " art for art's sake " is profoundly 
true. The educative function of art is, at best, 
an indirect one. Whatever intellectual enlighten- 
ment or moral elevation is to be gained from works 
of imagination, to communicate such benefits can- 
not be the conscious aim of the artist; nor is the 
merit of his work to be estimated by its didactic 
excellencies. Bad or indifferent painting or poetry 
is no more redeemed from artistic inferiority by 



324 JOHN CAIRD 

the moral or religious aim of the author than ill- 
dressed food or ill-made clothes by the respecta- 
bility or piety of the cook or tailor. And, on the 
other hand, a poem or picture may have many of 
the highest qualities of art, though the subject 
may be coarse or voluptuous, or the treatment 
such as to offend our moral susceptibilities. 

The poetry of Shelley and Byron contains much 
which, from a religious or moral point of view, 
cannot escape censure, whilst the literary form 
is of the highest artistic merit. The works of 
Dr. Watts and Mr. Tupper are full of pious 
teaching and unexceptional moralizing, yet, re- 
garded as poetry, both are execrable. The deep- 
est truth, in short, the noblest moral lessons may 
be conveyed in a form of art, but it is as uncon- 
sciously, with as little of a didactic aim, as are 
the lessons which Nature herself is ever teaching. 
The teachings of rock and stream and sea, the 
moralities addressed to us by stars and flowers, by 
autumn woods and mountain solitudes, do not 
reach us in the form of argumentative disquisi- 
tions, but of feelings and emanations which win 
their way insensibly into the soul. There are 
better sermons in stones and in the running brooks 
than human pen ever indited, but the lessons 
which these unconsecrated preachers address to 
us are innocent of logic or formal admonition. 



THE STUDY OF ART 325 

Oh, to what uses shall we put 

The wild-weed flower that simply blows 
And is there any moral shut 

Within the bosom of the rose ? 
But any man who walks the mead 

In bud or blade or bloom may find, 
According as his humors lead, 

A meaning suited to his mind ; 
And liberal applications lie 

In Art, like Nature, dearest friend, 
So 'twere to cramp its use if I 

Should hook it to some useful end. 

And the reason for what has now been said is 
obvious. It arises from the very nature of art 
as distinguished from science. Works of imagina- 
tion and works of instruction may treat of common 
subjects. The painter may depict, the poet sing, 
of the same scenes, persons, events, objects, 
whereof the naturalist, the historian, the philos- 
opher discourses. But the aspects in which the 
two sorts of observers contemplate the common 
objects are essentially different; nor is it possible 
to combine in the same work an artistic and a 
scientific view of a subject, without sacrificing the 
peculiar excellence of both. In proportion to its 
merits as a work of science it will be bad as a 
work of art, and the very qualities which make it 
good art will make it bad science. The same tract 
of country, to take a palpable illustration, may 
be represented in landscape painting and in a 
map. But the painter who tried to embody in hi.s 



326 JOHN CAIRD 

work the precise and definite information of the 
map, would make it a wretchedly bad picture, 
and the geographer would spoil his map, if he tried 
to introduce the artistic effects of light and shade 
into his delineation of the boundaries of coun- 
tries and of mountains, rivers, and streams. An 
anatomical drawing or model and a figure in 
sculpture deal both with the human frame; but 
if the sculptor is moved by the desire to display 
his anatomical knowledge, the ineffable grace and 
beauty we demand in a work of art vanishes, and 
what we get is neither science nor art, but only 
artistic pedantry. Or, to take but one other ex- 
ample, the conflicting and essentially inconsistent 
aims of science and art are exemplified in so-called 
didactic poems and novels with a purpose. A 
novel, say, may be written to illustrate some 
theory of life or to expose some social or political 
abuse the evils of intemperance, the bad effects 
of the land or marriage laws, or what not. But 
what will be the inevitable result? The writer 
may be in the structure of his mind either mainly 
artist or mainly theorist. If the art-instinct pre- 
dominates, there will be a constant temptation to 
sacrifice the didactic purpose to the exigencies of 
artistic treatment. Whenever the effective devel- 
opment of the plot would be marred by a too 
copious introduction of facts or a strict ad- 
herence to theory, the art impulse triumphs and 



THE STUDY OF ART 327 

fact or theory are ruthlessly sacrificed. If, on 
the contrary, the writer is too conscientiously bent 
on the communication of information or the ad- 
vocacy of a doctrine to care punctiliously for 
artistic effect, the result is a nondescript per- 
formance which gives neither information nor 
delight. 

Though, however, it is not the direct function 
of art to teach, yet it does teach. Without direct 
scientific or ethical aim, works of imagination are 
not only the means of purest enjoyment, but they 
convey to us an order of ideas of an altogether 
peculiar kind, reveal to us in nature and in human 
life much which it lies beyond the province of 
science or philosophy to disclose, and exert over 
the moral nature an elevating and ennobling in- 
fluence, in some respects the more potent that it is 
not their direct purpose to produce it. 

What then, let me ask, is the sort of teaching 
which it is the unconscious vocation of art to 
communicate, what is the peculiar class of ideas 
of which works of imagination, in distinction from 
all other productions of human thought, are the 
vehicles? The answer to this question may be 
summarily given by saying that it is the office of 
art to idealize nature and life, or to present their 
facts and phenomena in their ideal aspect. 

Does this answer mean that human art can im- 
prove on nature as God made it, or on human 



328 JOHN CAIRD 

life as Providence has ordered it? Can the loftiest 
genius invent a fairer world, can the most soaring 
imagination conceive, or the resources of art de- 
pict, forms more lovely, lights more dazzling, har- 
monies of tone and color more subtle and various 
than those which we have but to open our eyes 
to behold? Bring before your minds, for exam- 
ple, any one of nature's ever-changing aspects, 
and say if the attempt faithfully to render it 
would not be employment sufficient for the rarest 
skill of the most ambitious limner who ever handled 
brush and palette ? Light softly tinting the moun- 
tain edge at morning, or flooding meadow and 
woodland and stream with the golden rain of noon- 
tide, or flinging abroad with munificence of de- 
parting greatness its treasures of purple and 
vermilion and gold, ere it passes away with infinite 
gradations of fading splendor beneath the western 
horizon; the sea rippling up with gentle, scarce 
perceptible insinuation over the long reaches of 
the pebbly shore, or rushing with wild impetu- 
osity and hoarse clang of assault on the cliffs of 
an iron-bound coast; a mountain lake "in the 
light of the rising moon and of the first stars 
twinkling against the dusky silverness of twi- 
light " : what, it may be said, has human art 
to do with its own inventions when, in myriads 
of such scenes and aspects, with inexhaustible 
wealth of loveliness, nature awaits, yet baffles 



THE STUDY OF ART 329 

man's utmost skill to copy her? Nay, before he 
presumes to draw on the resources of his own im- 
agination, let the artist take the commonest nat- 
ural objects, the merest patch of earth or sea or 
sky a pool, a spray of hawthorn, a clump of 
heather, a cloud floating on the summer sky and 
say, whether, after his most patient and pro- 
tracted toil, he has succeeded in reproducing an 
exhaustive representation of what is before his 
eyes ? 

To this the answer is that, even if it were true 
that the artist has no other function than to 
record what he sees in nature, it is not every eye 
that can see what he sees. Nature reflects her- 
self in the mirror of man's mind, but the mirror in 
most cases is opaque or dim, sometimes distorted 
and fractured, and the reflection takes its char- 
acter from the medium by which it is produced. 
For the scientific man the outward facts, con- 
fused, accidental, unordered, which are all that 
the ordinary observer perceives, become luminous 
with the presence of hidden laws and relations. 
For the artistic or poetic observer, for the mind 
that is in sympathy with the soul of things 
sensuous forms, colors, motions, are alive with the 
spirit of beauty, transfigured with the hidden 
glow and splendor of a light that other eyes see 
not a light that never was on land or sea. And 
it is his high vocation, not merely to copy, to 



330 JOHN CAIRD 

tickle our imitative susceptibilities by a matter- 
of-fact imitation of what we saw before, but 
through the language of imagination to interpret 
nature, and make us look upon her face " with 
larger, other eyes than ours." 

But we may go further than this, and boldly 
say that there is a sense in which art does " im- 
prove on nature." All art that is worthy of the 
name is creative, calls into existence something 
more than the bare facts which the outward world 
offers to the senses. These are the materials on 
which it works, but it does not leave them un- 
changed. It takes them up, pours them, so to 
speak, into the crucible of imagination, flings 
aside the mere dross of accident, fuses them anew 
in the fire of thought and feeling, shapes and 
moulds them into conformity with its own ideals, 
and, lo ! from its creative hand, forms which eye 
hath not seen, embodied visions of a land that is 
very far off, and of which only in our most ex- 
alted moments we catch a glimpse, start into life 
and beauty. 

That there is nothing presumptuous in thus 
claiming for the imaginative arts the power to 
add something to nature, we may see by reflecting 
on what takes place even in the domain of what 
are called the industrial arts. Every piece of 
mechanism has in it something more and higher 
than nature contains. Watches, locomotives, 



THE STUDY OF ART 331 

power-looms, steam engines, are not mere natural 
products. They derive their materials from na- 
ture, they take advantage of natural forces and 
laws, but in their production a new, commanding, 
selecting, transforming element comes into play, 
compelling nature's raw materials into new com- 
binations, itself the supreme force amidst nature's 
forces, to wit, the element of thought, the idea or 
conception of the inventor. And in like manner 
in that which we call by eminence the realm of 
art, i.e. everything is based on nature and must, 
in a sense, be true to her; but that which consti- 
tutes the most precious element in the great work 
of art, that which arrests and holds the appre- 
ciative mind, is not nature slavishly copied, lit- 
erally, mechanically reproduced, but the idea, the 
inspiring thought, the soul of the artist speaking 
to our soul and causing nature to shine for us 
with a supernatural significance and glory. 

It is of course true that there is a kind of art 
which possesses nothing of this ideal element; and 
that, as there are uninspired day-laborers in art 
who can, at most, by technical skill produce 
mechanical copies of common facts and incidents, 
so there are innumerable patrons of art of the 
same order, in whose eyes vulgar imitation is the 
highest or only criterion of merit. But the high- 
est praise which such productions deserve is that, 
at most, of clever mimetic legerdemain. They 



332 JOHN CAIRD 

come no nearer to true art than the feats of the 
ventriloquist to eloquence, or the representations 
of political and other celebrities in Madame Tus- 
saud's gallery 1 to sculpture. 

Who amongst us cannot recall hundreds of ex- 
act, speaking likenesses of nobodies, prosaically 
accurate as the armchairs on which they sit, or 
the official robes with which they are bedecked 
portraits of which the best that can be said is 
that the subject and the limner were worthy of 
each other? And to see what true art can do, 
compare the wooden fidelity of such productions 
with the relation which a characteristic portrait 
of a man, worthy of a great painter's powers, 
bears to the actual fleshly form and features of 
the subject. Here you have no reproduction of 
facts as you could measure them by rule and com- 
pass. A thousand irrelevant details that would 
only mislead and distract arc left out. What is 
most significant of the soul and spirit is disen- 
gaged from what is purely arbitrary. What be- 
longs to the inner essence of the man is so grasped 
and rendered that all that meets the eye look, 
attitude, action, expression is instinct with 
meaning, and everything else is subordinated to 
that in which the man was most himself, and which 
made him the special individuality he was. Of 

1 A well-known gallery in London, devoted to the exhibi- 
tion of waxworks. 



THE STUDY OF ART 333 

a work which thus fulfils the conditions of true 
art it may be said that in it the subject stands 
revealed to us more clearly than in his actual 
presence the common eye could discern him. Its 
power to evoke reality is like that which our great- 
est poet ascribes to memory recalling the image 
of a dear face and form we see no more: 

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep 

Into his study of imagination ; 

And every lovely organ of her life 

Shall come apparelled in more precious habit, 

More moving delicate and full of life, 

Into the eye and prospect of his soul 

Than when she lived indeed. 

And this leads me to add, lastly, that it is the 
function of art to idealize not only nature but 
human life; and it is by the highest of all arts, 
poetry, and that which differs from poetry only in 
form, prose fiction, that this function can best be 
fulfilled. What a characteristic portrait is to an 
individual a great epic poem may be said to be 
to the life of a nation or the spirit of an age. A 
great dramatic poem or work of prose fiction, by 
the selection of its characters, actions, events, by 
the elimination of what is accidental and irrelevant 
to the main design or motive, by the evolution of 
the plot and the gradual and natural movement 
towards the denouement, compresses into brief 
compass an ideal of the moral life of man which 



334 JOHN CAIRD 

no literal record of facts could convey. Here, 
too, realism is not art, or at best only an inferior 
kind of art, and it is only by the presence of the 
ideal element that the profoundest truth can be 
obtained. 

No writer can reproduce the whole of human 
existence or more than a very limited part of it 
within the brief compass of a drama or story. 
To give us a representation of life, all that a 
writer can do is either to copy a small bit of it 
with minute and painstaking fidelity, to tear out 
a leaf or two from the book of human life, so 
that we shall have it line for line and letter for 
letter and this is the method of realistic fiction ; 
or, instead of a fac-simile of a portion of human 
experience, he may try to make his work a repre- 
sentation on a small scale of what he conceives 
to be its significance as a whole, or at least of 
the hidden moral meaning of some phase or sec- 
tion of it. From the innumerable phenomena in 
their confusion and complexity of aspect as they 
appear to the ordinary observer, he can pick out 
a limited number of characters and incidents, 
giving relief to some, throwing others into the 
shade or rejecting them as mere surplusage, and 
group, arrange, order what is left, so as to con- 
vey to the reader some idea of the unity, the 
harmony, the moral significance of the whole. And 
this obviously is a task which, though it admits 



THE STUDY OF ART 335 

of infinite varieties of excellence, implies, in order 
to its worthy fulfilment, powers of the very high- 
est order, a mind that is not merely observant but 
creative or poetic, a capacity, in other words, 
not simply of reflecting what lies on the surface, 
but of seeing under it and getting at the heart 
of life's mystery a capacity of taking up the 
scattered materials of experience and fusing them 
in the fire of imagination into a new organic whole, 
every element in which is full of significance. 

It is true that realism often implies no common 
gifts. It needs powers of observation and graphic 
delineation, such as few possess, to produce a 
vivid picture of even the superficial aspects of life. 
It is no despicable talent which enables a man 
to catch up and arrest the evanescent, fugitive 
play of light and shade on the surface of society, 
to reflect in fixed colors the light flow and ripple 
of its follies, its vanities, its absurdities, or to 
portray without exaggeration its vulgarity, its 
meanness, its baseness. Yet with all the talent dis- 
played in popular realistic fiction of the last and 
present centuries, it may be questioned whether the 
result even at the best is one to which the honor 
of true art can be ascribed. Truthfulness and 
reality are great qualities in an artist, but the 
realism that copies the surface only is often more 
untrue to nature than the wildest vagaries of 
fancy. Verisimilitude that is faithful only to the 



336 JOHN CAIRD 

outside is not seldom as deceptive as downright 
falsehood. The life of clubs and drawing rooms, of 
gossip, flirtation, and match-making, of dining and 
dressing, of flippant talk and conventional man- 
ners this, even among those whom its purports to 
represent, is not the true life of men and women, 
even the meanest of them. If it were, so far from 
laboriously recording, it were better for us in 
shame and sorrow to ignore and forget it. And 
the same is true of the realistic novel of low life. 
The literalism, however clever, is surely unprofita- 
ble, which invites us to occupy time and thought 
with minute and wearisome details of the dress, the 
surroundings, the food, the manner of speech, of 
the dwellers in London back lanes and hovels 
with the slang of costermongers and the chaff of 
omnibus-drivers, with inventories of the furniture 
of the tap-room or of the articles on the shelves of 
the pawnbroker's shop. 

In contrast with this crude realism, it is the 
function of the true artist so to represent life 
as to enable us to penetrate beneath its super- 
ficial aspects, and to perceive the grandeur that 
is hid under its apparent meanness, the good that 
lies at the basis of its seeming evil. Life is not 
really for any of us the poor, bare, barren thing 
it often seems. A treasure of beauty and joy 
of which we often wot not lies scattered about our 
daily path. Its dulness, its monotony and lack 



THE STUDY OF ART 337 

of interest, arise only from ignorance of the deeper 
forces that are at work underneath it. Its hard- 
ness and unloveliness are but the veil of a strange 
beauty which is ever ready to be revealed. It 
needs but the insight of the master-mind to see, 
and the touch of the master-hand to disclose, the 
wonder and greatness that are often latent in its 
homeliest details all the passion and the power, 
the pathos and tenderness, the often more than 
tragic interest with which our, common life is re- 
plete. Materials for art, subjects for song or 
story, if he can but detect and disentangle them, 
lie ready to the true artist's hand. Under a thou- 
sand varieties of forms and circumstance the es- 
sential greatness, the boundless possibilities of 
man's nature, the obstacles which resist and the 
strength of will which makes him master of his 
destiny, the struggle of duty with necessity, the 
collisions and conflicts, the play and strife of the 
great normal passions by which character and hap- 
piness are made or marred, the unsounded depths 
of sorrow and joy which human hearts contain, 
the golden threads of love and charity and truth 
and tenderness that are woven into every human 
life, and the sweet wonders of the common earth 
and skies which encompass it these things consti- 
tute the materials which make human life an inex- 
haustible field for the sympathetic insight and 
inventive power of art. 



338 JOHN CAIRD 

So long as man's life is what it is, the strange 
story of " a being breathing thoughtful breath, 
a traveller 'twixt life and death," so long as, in 
innumerable ever-varied aspects, the moral ele- 
ments of love and sorrow and hope and disap- 
pointment, of short-lived raptures and enduring 
cares, of temptations issuing in the strength of 
conquest or the weakness of discomfiture the 
wondrous medley of greatness and littleness, of 
things mundane and things celestial, of contrasts 
that move, now our laughter at their incongruity, 
now our terror at their awfulness in one word, 
the strange swift course run out beneath the silent 
heavens, with the shadow of the awful future 
creeping ever more near till we are lost in its im- 
penetrable mystery so long as life contains such 
elements, the mind that can strip away the mask 
of accident that conceals them and by the power 
of genius vividly reflect them, will find in it scope 
for the grandest efforts of imagination, and such 
minds will be numbered among the wisest teachers 
of mankind. 




LITERATURE is an art of expression. The ma- 
terial which it employs is experience ; or, in other 
words, literature is the expression of life. Action, 
emotion, and thought are the three great divisions 
of life, and constitute experience. Literature un- 
dertakes to represent such experience through the 
medium of language, and to bring it home to the 
understanding of the reader. It is obvious that 
literature makes its appeal to the individual mind 
and is intelligible only in so far as the individual 
is able to comprehend its language and interpret 
the experience there embedded. A good reader is 
an author's best fortune, for the writer strives 
in vain unless he be understood. The reader's own 
experience is the key to literature. It may be 
direct experience, events and passions personal to 
himself; or it may be indirect, events and passions 
observed in the career of others, or at least learned 
by report; but in any case the power to under- 

1 Reprinted through the generous permission of Doubleday, 
Page and Company, from The Appreciation of Literature, by 
George E. Woodberry. 

339 



340 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

stand indirect experience, that is, experience not 
one's own, depends on the existence of a common 
human nature and on the share of it which the 
reader has already realized in his own life and 
self-consciousness. It is by sympathy and im- 
agination that one enters into the lives and for- 
tunes of others ; and these two faculties, which are 
the great interpretative powers of literature, have 
richness, strength, and scope in proportion to the 
quality and quantity of individual experience, to 
the depth and range of one's own life. Sympathy 
and imagination are the faculties which literature 
most cultivates by exercise, and the enlightenment 
which literature brings is in the main achieved 
through them. It is plain that the appreciation of 
literature is a continuing process, and depends on 
increase of experience in the personal life, and 
on growth of the imaginative and sympathetic 
powers ; hence it is changeable in taste and stand- 
ard, and varies from one stage of life to another. 
It is a measure of growth because it proceeds 
from growth; to love the poets is a certificate of 
manhood, a proof that one has put forth the 
powers and appropriated the means of life, that 
one is on the way at least to be humanized. Lit- 
erature is the foremost of the humanities, of those 
instrumentalities by which man becomes more com- 
pletely human; and in the individual this end is 
furthered in proportion as he understands human 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 

nature in others under its various modes, and 
brings forth from it in himself the richest experi- 
ence of its capacities. Openness to experience, or 
sensibility, is the prime quality of the good reader ; 
and to this the writer adds, on the active or crea- 
tive side, the power of expression through lan- 
guage. These two faculties are the essential con- 
stituents of literary genius. The appropriation 
of a work of genius is, in a certain sense, a 
repetition of the act of creation under different 
circumstances, and the good reader must share in 
the genius of his author in however pale a form 
and on however low a scale. It has long been 
recognized that this likeness exists between the 
two; for the act of reading is a blending of two 
souls, nor is it seldom that the reader brings the 
best part, vivifying his author with his own mem- 
ory and aspiration, and imparting a flame to the 
words from his own soul. The appreciation of 
literature is thus by no means a simple matter; 
it is not the ability to read, nor even a canon of 
criticism and rules of admiration and censure that 
are required ; but a live soul, full of curiosity and 
interest in life, sensitive to impressions, acute and 
subtle in reception, prompt to complete a sugges- 
tion, and always ready with the light of its own 
life to serve as a lamp unto its feet. Apprecia- 
tion of literature, too, is neither rapid nor final; 
it moves with no swifter step than life itself, and 



GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

it opens, like life, always on larger horizons and 
other labors. 

Experience, such as has been indicated, is usu- 
ally found in literature in a complex form. It 
may be usefully discriminated as either personal, 
national, or universal, and in authors individually 
some one of these kinds is generally predominant. 
Byron is the type of the personal writer, inter- 
ested in his own moods and fortunes, egotistic in 
all his life forces, creating his heroes in his own 
image and repeating in them his qualities, his 
ambitions and disillusions, giving his confession 
through their lips. Virgil is the most distin- 
guished example of the national writer; one al- 
ways thinks of Rome in the same breath, " Ro- 
man Virgil," as Tennyson begins his noble tribute. 
Virgil set forth the specific and peculiar experi- 
ence of the Roman state, giving expression to 
common traits and interests, the tradition and 
ideals and manners of the empire that had come 
to be out of the toil of the fathers and was then 
the glory of the earth. Universal experience is 
that which is the same for all men, whatever their 
race, country, or age, and is exemplified most 
plainly by the stories of Scripture which have 
had greatest currency, and in a single author most 
purely by Shakespeare. The scale of experience 
with which literature deals, in other words, begins 
with the narrow circle of the writer's own life and 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 343 

widens out through his city, people, nation, his 
age, until it includes humanity as such ; and in 
the final and simplest form this experience is of 
interest, not because it was one man's or one na- 
tion's, but because it may be the experience of 
any man put in such circumstances. Every man 
has this threefold ply in his life ; he has that 
human nature which is common to the race with 
its unchanging passions, needs, and vicissitude of 
human events, and he adds to this the special 
traits of his age and country, which he also has 
in common with his fellows ; and besides he pos- 
sesses peculiarities of character and temperament 
and fortune in life in which his individuality lies. 
Literature corresponds to this arrangement by 
presenting its work similarly woven of individual, 
national, and universal strands, and it has more 
breadth of significance in proportion as it em- 
bodies experience most purely in the Shakespear- 
ian or Scriptural type. The appreciation of lit- 
erature in this type is most ready, in the greatest 
number of cases, because a certain preparation in 
history or biography is necessary to the compre- 
hension of the national and personal types. The 
direct appeal to experience, in other words, with- 
out the intervention of study, is made on the 
ground of universal life ; and to this kind, by 
virtue of the universal element in it, the most 
enduring literature belongs. 



GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

To approach the matter in another way, life is 
infinite in the number of its phenomena, which 
taken together make up experience ; but there is 
great sameness in the phenomena. The monotony 
of human life is one of the final and persistent 
impressions made upon the reader as upon the 
traveler. It is natural, therefore, that a love 
song that was merely a personal effusion of feel- 
ing sung in Persia centuries ago should seem to 
pour forth the genuine emotion of some lover of 
to-day in a far-off land, and should serve him 
as the verbal channel of his joy or grief. Emo- 
tion has thus prepared for it in lyric poetry of 
all lands a ritual already written and established. 
Action, likewise, whose poetic form is epic and 
dramatic poetry, has a literature of war and pas- 
sion that passes current everywhere ; and thought, 
the third great form of experience, which is set 
forth in philosophy or science, sums up its formu- 
las of knowledge and wisdom which serve equally 
in all languages. The common element is so great, 
the limits of human experience in all its forms 
are so restricted, that there results this easy com- 
munication and interchange between races and 
ages. Literature, so built up and disseminated, 
while it always offers a wealth of expression for 
the normal and mediocre experience of life, the 
commonplace, nevertheless tends to prefer, in its 
high examples, that which is surpassing in emo- 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 345 

tion, action, and thought, and to conserve this, 
however far beyond reality, as the mode of over- 
flow of the human soul in its aspiration and its 
dream of what is possible to itself. Man is a 
dreamer even more than he is an actor ; his actions 
indeed are hardly more than fragments and relics 
of his dreams. This is the realm of the ideal, and 
literature treasures there its greatest works, 
those which are especially regarded as its works 
of high genius in creative imagination. The ma- 
terial is still experience, and the expression sought 
is still the expression of life, but it is experience 
transformed by being newly arranged and it is 
life expressed rather in its function of power than 
in its operation of reality. This change which 
passes upon experience and gives scope to the 
soul's power is brought about by the intervention 
of art; for literature is not a record of experi- 
ence primarily and simply, but it is an art using 
experience for ulterior ends. 

Experience, things as they occur, the mere ma- 
terial of expression, is raw material, a crude ag- 
glomeration, life just as it comes to pass. If a 
newspaper were the complete history of a day, 
as a journalist once defined it, this would be an 
example of the expression in language of such ex- 
perience; but it would not be literature, because 
there would have been no intervention of art in 
the case. The primary step in art is selection 



346 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

from the crude mass of material of such parts as 
will serve the purpose of the writer ; these parts 
are then combined so as to make a whole, that is, 
they are put in necessary relations one with an- 
other such that if any part were to be taken away 
the whole would fall to pieces through lack of sup- 
port ; a whole so constructed is said to have or- 
ganic unity, the unity of an organism. This 
unity is the end of art, and the steps to it are 
selection and logical combination. This is true of 
the arts in general, and gave rise to Michael An- 
gelo's well-known definition, " art is the purga- 
tion of superfluities." In literature such construc- 
tion is illustrated by the general nature of plot, 
which is a connection of events in the relation of 
cause and effect such that each is necessary to the 
course and issue of the action as a whole, and none 
superfluous. Hardly inferior to the use of plot 
in the field of action as an artistic resource in 
literature is the employment of type in the field 
of character ; here a similar process of selection 
takes place in consequence of which the person, 
or type, possesses all the qualities common to a 
class of individuals and no quality peculiar to any 
one individual; this is ideal character. Thus 
Romeo is all a lover, Achilles all a hero, lago all 
a villain. Ideal character, or type, and ideal 
action, or plot, are the two great modes of creative 
art in imaginative literature; but there are be- 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 347 

sides many other artistic means employed by lit- 
erature in its representation of life. These two 
serve sufficiently to illustrate the use of art made 
by literature, which is to clarify the experience 
which is its material ; thus plot rationalizes events 
under the law of cause and effect, and type sim- 
plifies character by presenting it under a single 
and immutable aspect, or by restricting attention 
to a few phases of it within a narrow range. 
Without entering on the mazes of aesthetic theory, 
where there is little certainty, it is enough to ob- 
serve that art in general seeks order in life and 
obtains it by process of segregation and recom- 
bination, whether the order so found be something 
plucked from the chaos of nature and revealed as 
an inner harmony of the universe, or be merely 
the grace flowing from man upon the world and 
the illusion of his limiting intelligence. The pres- 
ence of this order in art is plain ; and also the 
principle of clarification, of simplification, of econ- 
omy in the interest of an intelligible and compre- 
hensive conception of experience, operating to dis- 
close this order, is likewise to be observed. What- 
ever may be the validity of art, in the philosophic 
sense, what is essential here is the simple fact of 
its presence as the mode by which literature deals 
with experience in order to draw from life its use 
and meaning for men. The conclusion is that lit- 
erature represents life in certain formal ways ; a 



degree of formalism is indeed inseparable from 
literature, as from all the other arts, and some 
acquaintance with its traditionary forms is indis- 
pensable to the appreciation of its contents, while, 
besides, the pleasure of the forms themselves is a 
part of its real value. The importance of the 
formal side of literature is not lessened by the 
fact that the perception of form and delight in it 
are not English traits in a high degree; in this 
respect the southern nations excel the northern 
peoples by far ; it is probable, indeed, that for the 
English generally, in approaching their literature, 
there is a sense of artificiality in the mere form 
of verse greater than they feel in the case of a 
picture or a statue. The external form, which is 
generally described as technique, is really no more 
artificial than the internal form, which consists 
in the development of the theme independently of 
its melodic investiture ; neither is truly artificial, 
but both belong under artistic formalism, which 
is the method whereby great imaginative literature 
takes body and acquires its intense and enduring 
life. 

In correspondence with the three kinds of ex- 
perience, personal, national, and universal, each 
recreated in artistic form, there are three modes 
of critical approach to literature in order to inter- 
pret and understand its contents. The first and 
simplest is the purely aesthetic, and is especially 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 349 

applicable to universal literature; it looks only 
at the work, which is freed from conditions of 
time and place and origin, analyzes its qualities, 
compares it with others, classifies, and so judges 
it under formal criteria by itself alone and for 
its own sake as an incarnation of that human life, 
an expression of that human spirit which is the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever, at least 
within the range of the arc which art has thus 
far measured; it is this sameness in the soul, as 
interpreted by art, which justifies the absolute 
nature of this mode of criticism. The second is 
the purely historical mode of approach, and is 
appropriate to the national element in experience 
and the works which most embody it in whatever 
form; it looks at the environment, examines race, 
country, and epoch, and seeks to understand the 
work as merely the result of general social forces 
and broad conditions and as the necessary and, 
as it were, fatal expression of these, and allows 
the least possible part to individual choice or 
influence. The third mode, which is more proper 
to the personal element, is the psychological; it 
looks at the personality of the writer and seeks to 
interpret his work as the result and expression of 
his peculiar temperament and faculty under the 
personal conditions of his birth, education, and 
opportunities. All three are useful methods and 
are alike indispensable ; and as literature normally 



350 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

presents the three kinds of experience blended, 
and seldom singly in a pure form, it is generally 
necessary to employ the three kinds of criticism, 
without giving undue advantage to any one of 
them, in order to grasp any great work fully in 
its personality, its historical significance, and its 
universal and imperishable aesthetic value. It is 
nevertheless true that mere biography and mere 
history are not, properly speaking, literary ele- 
ments, when literature is regarded as a fine art; 
they are adjuncts to the interpretation of the 
work just as grammar may be, or archaeology, or 
any other subsidiary aid ; but the characteristic 
value of any literary work, that which makes it 
literature, is independent of these and is a more 
vital and enduring thing. This value lies in its 
being a work of art. 

The critical approach to literature, by what- 
ever mode, implies study, an acquired knowledge of 
biography or history or of artistic forms. The 
direct aim of all art, however, is to please, and 
to please immediately ; study may be a part of 
the necessary preparation for appreciation, but 
it does not enter into the appreciation itself. It 
is useful to recognize at once the fact that lit- 
erature is not an object of study, but a mode of 
pleasure; it is not a thing to be known merely 
like science, but to be lived. If a book does not 
yield immediate pleasure to the reader, as direct 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 351 

and intimate as sensation or emotion, it fails with 
that particular person to discharge the proper 
function of literature. The typical example of 
the operation of literature is found in the company 
of warriors listening to the old minstrel who re- 
lates the heroic deeds and tragic histories that 
make up the tradition of the tribe, or in the groups 
in the mediaeval marketplace who hung on the lips 
of the traveler telling tales, the poet chanting 
lays, or the players representing in rude scenes 
the comedy of human life. This is not to say 
that the hearer is without some preparation, but 
not that of study. Even the simplest books, such 
as those about nature, require that there should 
have been in the reader some previous life, some 
training of the eye, some curiosity about birds 
and beasts and the treasure-trove of the seabeach. 
The having lived is the essential condition of any 
appreciation ; or, in other words, the appeal to 
experience, lies back of all literary pleasure. The 
more direct this is, the better ; and literature rises 
in the scale of value in proportion as the appeal 
is made to broader and wider experience, to more 
and more of life already realized in the reader 
himself. His life with nature must be wide and 
deep before he can appreciate formally and easily 
the greater works of poetic imagination in which 
nature is employed as the channel of high passion, 
as the symbol of philosophic truth, or even as 



352 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

the harmonious and enhancing environment of 
scenes of love or tragedy. That reader does best 
who in his use of literature insists on the presence 
of this immediate appeal to himself in the books 
he reads. If the book does not have this effect 
with him, if it does not cooperate with his own 
taste and interest, it may be the best of books for 
others, but it is not for him, at least it is not 
yet for him. Study, the conscious preparation to 
understand, begins when the difficulty of appre- 
ciation becomes insurmountable by private and 
personal experience. The obstacle is, in the main, 
merely a defect in experience such as to impair 
his powers of imagination and sympathy which 
interpret other lives and experience not his own 
to himself. This obstacle rises especially in past 
literature, and it increases in proportion to the 
antiquity or foreignness of the literature, in gen- 
eral, in the degree to which the literature involves 
different conditions of life from those which are 
contemporary. It is here that scholarship of all 
sorts has its function in the endeavor to make con- 
temporary in thought the past phases of life. 

The soul is essentially the same in all men ; yet 
its temperament, its consciousness of the world 
and of itself, its faith and the modes of its am- 
bition and consolation are widely different in the 
various races and civilizations. It is extremely 
difficult even for a trained and instructed imagina- 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 353 

tion to realize the world of a mediaeval saint or of 
a Greek sophist or of a Jewish enthusiast of the 
age of the prophets. If one attempts to recon- 
struct the physical aspect of such a man's thought 
of the heavens and the earth, and then adds, as 
best he can, the intellectual and moral contents of 
such a mind and heart, he seems moving in a world 
of mistake and ignorance so different from our 
own as, to seem a mad world. It is curious how 
often the past world of our own blood, the scheme 
of knowledge and scope of meditation and pas- 
sion, take on this form of apparent madness in 
the eyes of a modern reader who stops to think. 
Still more, if one attempts to reconstruct the 
world of the Arab, the Hindoo, the Chinese, the 
task grows hopeless ; looking into the faces of the 
orientals, eye to eye, is a blanker thing than gaz- 
ing at the Sphinx ; the mystery of personality 
seems unfathomable in men by whom fundamental 
ideas are so differently held and conceived as often 
to be unintelligible to us and hardly recognizable ; 
and we conclude briefly, " the oriental is in- 
scrutable." The attempt to fathom a foreign lit- 
erature is like that of acquiring the language; at 
first it seems easy, but with progress it becomes 
hard ; and it is the same, but in an infinitely 
greater degree, with the task of acquiring an 
Italian or an Arab or a Hindoo soul. The defect 
of experience in our case allows the imagination 



354 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

to work only imperfectly in constructing, and the 
sympathies to flow inadequately in interpreting, 
the scenes, passions, and moods of other lands and 
peoples ; and literature loses its power in propor- 
tion as its necessary appeal to ourselves dimin- 
ishes. We read Greek books, but not as the 
Greeks read them ; and one of the strange quali- 
ties of immortal books is that they permit them- 
selves to be so read and yet to give forth an intel- 
ligible and supreme meaning. The reader takes 
so much of the book as has affinity with him, and 
it is as if the book were re-written in his mind; 
indeed, it often happens that the book which was 
written is not the book which is read, so great is 
the reader's share in that blending of two souls 
which is the act of reading; it was certainly thus, 
for example, that Emerson read Hafiz. The 
reader's mind enters into every book, but espe- 
cially into works of imagination ; there is some- 
thing private in his understanding of his author, 
and this is a greater element in proportion to the 
vitality and richness of his mind ; what he makes 
of an ancient or a foreign book is often, it must 
be suspected, something that departs widely from 
the original author's design. The function of 
scholarship, in appreciation, is so to inform the 
reader with respect to the material and environ- 
ment of the book that he may have the truest 
possible operation of imagination and the freest 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 355 

possibly play of sympathy in appropriating the 
book ; but, in comparison with contemporary and 
native appreciation, it is usually a limited success 
which is thus gained. 

As the study of biography, history, archaeology, 
and other lights on past conditions or alien civiliza- 
tions are aids to the reader in understanding and 
appropriating unfamiliar experience, so some 
study of artistic forms of expression assists him 
in appreciating literature, particularly in its 
higher and more refined phases. In poetry, espe- 
cially, a modest acquaintance with the melodic 
modes of languages is indispensable ; but it need 
not exceed the limits which would similarly be 
set for an elementary appreciation of music. It 
is not a knowledge of prosody, of the different 
varieties of meter and their combinations, of the 
technique of verse as taught in books that is neces- 
sary ; such study is, for the most part, wearisome 
and fruitless. The essential thing is to be able 
to read verse, and to read it intelligently so that 
it declares itself to be verse and not prose by the 
mere fall of the syllables. It is extraordinary how 
rare this power has become. It is true that in 
older modes of education, such as the Greek, the 
melodic modes of the language were defined and 
held by the concurrence of the instrument and the 
dance with the choral movement of the words ; but 
verse, even when not so sustained, has a clear 



movement of its own. The ear should be trained 
by the oral repetition of verse, if it is to be true ; 
but this is seldom done in any effective way. It 
is not only the keen sense of the melody of verse 
which has been lost ; the significance of the line 
and the phrase as units of composition is also 
seldom known. It is not possible to appreciate 
verse unless it is correctly read, nor to realize its 
beauty without some sense of its structure, that is, 
of the unitary value of phrase, line, and stanza, 
and of the mode of their combination to build up 
the whole into one poem. To perceive melodic 
time in verse with its subtle modulation of cadence 
and rhythm, and to be aware of the interlacing and 
close junction of phrase and line in which much 
of the grace and felicity of poetry resides, are 
labors neither difficult nor long; a little intelligent 
attention suffices to acquire this power and with it 
the formal pleasure of literature begins. The way 
once entered on may lead so far as to the appre- 
ciation of a Greek ode or even to pleasure 
in the intricacies of a Persian song. It is 
not, however, necessary to go to such lengths. 
The forms of poetry have their effect, like 
the forms of other arts, without elaborate study 
or developed knowledge of technique. Ora- 
tory is a mode of address full of artifice, but it 
is artifice grounded upon nature, so that it sways 
the " fierce democratie " by itself ; and the forms 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 357 

of poetry are similarly grounded upon nature, and 
its music plays upon the heart and mind of men 
by the necessity of their constitution. A scientific 
and technical knowledge is by no means required 
of the reader ; but an elementary acquaintance 
with melody and structure, such as to allow cor- 
rect reading and the perception of the harmonious 
confinement of thought within the limits of the 
musical beats of phrase and line, is hardly to be 
dispensed with. It is questionable, on the other 
hand, whether much is gained by study of the 
artistic field in larger matters, such as, for ex- 
ample, dramatic construction. In that direction 
the reader turns his attention from the work to 
the workmanship, and may embarrass himself with 
theory, or preconceptions not universally applica- 
ble. But without setting limits to study of what- 
ever sort, for all modes of study have possible 
uses, it is to be laid down in general that all study 
of literature in the way of preparation to grasp 
and understand, w r hether it be linguistic, historical, 
or aesthetic, exists to be forgotten and laid off as 
soon as it is completed ; its end is to withdraw one 
by one the veils, and leave the reader alone 
with the spirit of the book, which then speaks to 
him face to face. All the rest was but prelimi- 
nary ; it is only then that he begins to read. 

The uses of study in all its kinds being thus 
subsidiary and a means of remedying defects in 



358 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

the power of imagination, sympathy, and per- 
ception of form, the reader is at last thrown fairly 
back upon his own experience, or the kind and 
quality of the life he has lived, for his apprecia- 
tion of literature; he is left to himself. If the 
light is not in him, he cannot see ; and, in general, 
large parts of literature remain dark and, even 
in authors whom he comprehends in the main por- 
tions, continue obscure. This is especially true 
of the greatest works of genius. For the reader 
the measure of his understanding of the author 
is the measure of the author; and from this there 
is no appeal. It results from these conditions that 
literature is slowly appropriated and is a thing 
of growth. The reader cannot transcend at the 
moment his own season; as a child he reads as 
a child, and as a man, as a man. A boy of ten 
may read Homer, but he reads him with the power 
of a boy of ten. It is a child's Homer. The de- 
pendence of the book on the reader being so strict, 
it is always advisable to keep literary study on 
a near level with life as it is in the individual case. 
The natural introduction to literature for the 
very young is by no means of that universal sort 
which is selected from all ages and requires no 
study, such as the stories of Scripture, short 
legendary tales of history, beast and bird fables, 
fairy tales and the like. They have, besides their 
intelligibility, the advantage of accustoming the 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 359 

mind to a make-believe world, natural to childish 
fancy, and so la3 T ing the foundation for that prin- 
ciple of convention which is fundamental in art 
and indispensable in its practice, and also of 
making the contemplation of imaginary experi- 
ence habitual so that there is no shock between 
it and truth. The transposition by which human 
experience is placed in the bird and beast world is 
a literary fiction ; as an element in early educa- 
tion it helps to give that plasticity to the world 
of fact which is essential to the artistic interpre- 
tation of life and the imaginary habit of mind. 
The serious study of one's own literature is most 
fruitfully begun by acquaintance with those au- 
thors who are in vogue and nearly contemporary, 
the literature of the century preceding, on the 
well-worn principle of proceeding in knowledge 
from the better-known to less well-known, and be- 
cause there is the minimum of necessary study 
intervening between author and reader. To ap- 
proach and have practice in the literature that 
requires study there is nothing better for the be- 
ginner than Greek literature, and it has the pe- 
culiar advantage for broadening the mind of being 
a pagan literature and yet closely kindred to our 
own, presenting human experience under very dif- 
ferent conditions from the present, and yet easily 
realizable in wise and beautiful forms. In Greek 
literature, too, the universal element is greater 



360 GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

than in any other, and this facilitates its compre- 
hension while the mind becomes accustomed to 
the mixture with the universal of the past, the 
temporal, the racial, the obscure, the dead. It is 
advisable, also, in these early choices and initial 
steps to consider the season of the reader, to 
begin with books in which action has a large share 
and postpone those in which thought is dominant, 
to favor those of simple rather than of refined 
emotion, to keep in all things near to the time of 
life and to that experience especially which is 
nascent if not already arrived in the reader. And 
what is true of the beginner is true for every later 
period. It is best to be honest with oneself, and 
to respect one's own tastes and predilections ; not 
to read books because they are classics, if they 
yield no true pleasure, not to force a tame liking, 
not to feign to oneself, or in other ways to con- 
fuse what it is said one ought to like with what 
one does like sincerely. It is always to be borne 
in mind that appreciation is a thing of growth. 
A great book does not give itself all at once, nor 
perhaps quickly, but the maxim holds good, 
slow love is long love. Books naturally fall into 
three classes : those that are outlived, because the 
experience they contain and address is shallow or 
transitory ; those that are arrived at late because 
the experience involved is mature; and those, the 
greatest, which give something to the youngest 



FIRST PRINCIPLES 361 

and have something left to give to the oldest, 
which keep pace with life itself and like life dis- 
close themselves more profoundly, intimately, and 
in expanding values with familiarity. The secret 
of appreciation is to share the passion for life 
that literature itself exemplifies and contains ; out 
of real experience, the best that one can have, to 
possess oneself of that imaginary experience which 
is the stuff of larger life and the place of the ideal 
expansion of the soul, the gateway to which is art 
in all forms and primarily literature ; to avail 
oneself of that for pleasure and wisdom and ful- 
ness of life. It is those minds which are thus 
experienced that alone come to be on the level of 
the greatest works and to absorb their life ; but 
the way is by gradual ascent, by natural growth, 
by maintaining a vital relation with what is read. 
So long as the bond between author and reader 
is a living bond, appreciation is secure. 



HOW TO READ 1 

FREDERIC HARRISON 

IT is the fashion for those who have any con- 
nection with letters to expatiate on the infinite 
blessings of literature, and the miraculous achieve- 
ments of the press : to extol, as a gift above price, 
the taste for study and the love of reading. Far 
be it from me to gainsay the inestimable value of 
good books, or to discourage any man from read- 
ing the best ; but I often think that we forget that 
other side to this glorious view of literature the 
misuse of books, the debilitating waste of brain in 
aimless, promiscuous, vapid reading, or even, it 
may be, in the poisonous inhalation of mere lit- 
erary garbage and bad men's worst thoughts. 

For what can a book be more than the man 
who wrote it? The brightest genius seldom puts 
the best of his own soul into his printed page ; 
and some famous men have certainly put the worst 
of theirs. Yet are all men desirable companions, 
much less teachers, able to give us advice, even 

1 Reprinted through the generous permission of The Mac- 
millan Company, from The Choice of Books, by Frederic Har- 
rison. 

362 



HOW TO READ 363 

of those who get reputation and command a hear- 
ing? To put out of the question that writing 
which is positively bad, are we not, amidst the 
multiplicity of books and of writers, in continual 
danger of being drawn off by what is stimulating 
rather than solid, by curiosity after something 
accidentally notorious, by what has no intelligible 
thing to recommend it, except that it is new? 
Now, to stuff our minds with what is simply trivial, 
simply curious, or that which at best has but a 
low nutritive power, this is to close our minds to 
what is solid and enlarging, and spiritually sus- 
taining. Whether our neglect of the great books 
comes from our not reading at all, or from an 
incorrigible habit of reading the little books, it 
ends in just the same thing. And that thing is 
ignorance of all the greater literature of the 
world. To neglect all the abiding parts of knowl- 
edge for the sake of the evanescent parts is really 
to know nothing worth knowing. It is in the end 
the same, whether we do not use our minds for 
serious study at all, or whether we exhaust them 
by an impotent voracity for desultory " informa- 
tion " a thing as fruitful as whistling. Of the 
two evils I prefer the former. At least, in that 
case, the mind is healthy and open. It is not 
gorged and enfeebled by excess in that which can- 
not nourish, much less enlarge and beautify our 
nature. 



364 FREDERIC HARRISON 

But there is much more than this. Even to 
those who resolutely avoid the idleness of reading 
what is trivial, a difficulty is presented a diffi- 
culty every day increasing by virtue even of our 
abundance of books. What are the subjects, what 
are the class of books we are to read, in what 
order, with what connection, to what ultimate 
use or object? Even those who are resolved to 
read the better books are embarrassed by a field 
of choice practically boundless. The longest life, 
the greatest industry, joined to the most powerful 
memory, would not suffice to make us profit from 
a hundredth part of the world of books before us. 
If the great Newton said that he seemed to have 
been all his life gathering a few shells on the shore, 
whilst a boundless ocean of truth still lay beyond 
and unknown to him, how much more to each of 
us must the sea of literature be a pathless im- 
mensity beyond our powers of vision or of reach 
an immensity in which industry itself is useless 
without judgment, method, discipline; where it is 
of infinite importance what we can learn and re- 
member, and of utterly no importance what we may 
have once looked at or heard of. Alas ! the most 
of our reading leaves as little mark even in our 
own education as the foam that gathers round the 
keel of a passing boat ! For myself, I am inclined 
to think the most useful help to reading is to know 
what we should not read, what we can keep out 



HOW TO READ 365 

from that small cleared spot in the overgrown 
jungle of " information," the corner which we can 
call our ordered patch of fruit-bearing knowledge. 
The incessant accumulation of fresh books must 
hinder any real knowledge of the old ; for the mul- 
tiplicity of volumes becomes a bar upon our use 
of any. In literature especially does it hold 
that we cannot see the wood for the trees. 

How shall we choose our books ? Which are the 
best, the eternal, indispensable books? To all to 
whom reading is something more than a refined 
idleness these questions recur, bringing with them 
the sense of bewilderment ; and a still, small voice 
within us is for ever crying out for some guide 
across the Slough of Despond of an illimitable 
and ever-swelling literature. How many a man 
stands beside it, as uncertain of his pathway as 
the Pilgrim, when he who dreamed the immortal 
dream * heard him " break out with a lamentable 
cry ; saying, what shall I do ? " 

And this, which comes home to all of us at 
times, presses hardest upon those who have lost 
the opportunity of systematic education, who have 
to educate themselves, or who seek to guide the 
education of their young people. Systematic 

1 Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory in the form of a dream ; 
" he " refers to the author, John Bunyan, " him " to the chief 
character, Christian, the Pilgrim. The Slough of Despond is 
a deep bog into which Christian falls and from which Help 
rescues him. 



366 FREDERIC HARRISON 

reading is but little in favor even amongst studious 
men; in a true sense it is hardly possible for 
women. A comprehensive course of home study, 
and a guide to books, fit for the highest education 
of women, is yet a blank page remaining to be 
filled. Generations of men of culture have la- 
bored to organize a system of reading and ma- 
terials appropriate for the methodical education 
of men in academic lines. Teaching equal in 
mental calibre to any that is open to men in uni- 
versities, yet modified for the needs of those who 
must study at home, remains in the dim pages of 
that melancholy volume entitled Libri valde dc- 
siderati. 1 

I do not aspire to fill one of those blank pages ; 
but I long to speak a word or two, as the Pilgrim 
did to Neighbor Pliable, 2 upon the glories that 
await those who will pass through the narrow 
wicket-gate. On this, if one can find anything 
useful to say, it may be chiefly from the memory 
of the waste labor and pitiful stumbling in the 
dark which fill up so much of the travail that one 
is fain to call one's own education. We who have 
wandered in the wastes so long, and lost so much 
of our lives in our wandering, may at least offer 
warnings to younger wayfarers, as men who in 

1 Books much desired. 

2 The Pilgrim's companion during the first part of the jour- 
ney to the Heavenly City. 



HOW TO READ 367 

thorny paths have borne the heat and burden of 
the day might give a clue to their journey to those 
who have yet a morning and a noon. As I look 
back and think of those cataracts of printed stuff 
which honest compositors set up, meaning, let us 
trust, no harm, and which at least found them in 
daily bread, printed stuff which I and the rest 
of us, to our infinitely small profit, have consumed 
with our eyes, not even making an honest living 
of it, but much impairing our substance, I could 
almost reckon the printing press as amongst the 
scourges of mankind. I am grown a wiser and 
a sadder man, importunate, like that Ancient 
Mariner, to tell each blithe wedding guest the tale 
of his shipwreck on the infinite sea of printer's 
ink, as one escaped by -mercy and grace from the 
region where there is water, water, everywhere, 
and not a drop to drink. 

A man of power, who has got more from books 
than most of his contemporaries, once said: 
" Form a habit of reading, do not mind what you 
read ; the reading of better books will come when 
you have a habit of reading the inferior." We 
need not accept this obiter dictum of Lord Sher- 
brooke. A habit of reading idly debilitates an3 
corrupts the mind for all wholesome reading; the 
habit of reading wisely is one of the most difficult 
habits to acquire, needing strong resolution and 
infinite pains ; and reading for mere reading's sake, 



368 FREDERIC HARRISON 

instead of for the sake of the good we gain from 
reading, is one of the worst and commonest and 
most unwholesome habits we ha\e. And so our 
inimitable humorist has made delightful fun of 
the solid books, which no gentleman's library 
should be without, the Humes, Gibbons, Adam 
Smiths, which, he says, are not books at all, and 
prefers some " kind-hearted play-book," or at 
times the Town and County Magazine. Poor 
Lamb has not a little to answer for, in the revived 
relish for garbage unearthed from old theatrical 
dung-heaps. Be it jest or earnest, I have little 
patience with the Elia-tic philosophy of the friv- 
olous. 1 Why do we still suffer the traditional 
hypocrisy about the dignity of literature litera- 
ture, I mean, in the gross, which includes about 
equal parts of what is useful and what is useless? 
Why are books as books, writers as writers, read- 
ers as readers, meritorious, apart from any good 
in them, or anything that we can get from them? 
Why do we pride ourselves on our powers of ab- 
sorbing print, as our grandfathers did on their 
gifts in imbibing port, when we know that there 
is a mode of absorbing print, which makes it im- 
possible that we can ever learn anything good out 
of books? 

1 Charles Lamb's delight in reading wellnigh anything ; see 
" Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," in The Essays 
ofElui. 



HOW TO READ 369 

Our stately Milton said in a passage which is 
one of the watchwords of the English race, " as 
good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book." But 
has he not also said that he would " have a vigi- 
lant eye how Bookes demeane themselves, as well 
as men; and do sharpest justice on them as male- 
factors"? . . . Yes! they do kill the good book 
who deliver up their few and precious hours of 
reading to the trivial book; they make it dead 
for them ; they do what lies in them to destroy 
" the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, im- 
balm'd and treasured up on purpose to a life be- 
yond life ; " they " spill that season'd life of man 
preserv'd and stor'd up in Bookes." For in the 
wilderness of books most men, certainly all busy 
men, must strictly choose. If they saturate their 
minds with the idler books, the " good book," 
which Milton calls " an immortality rather than 
a life," is dead to them: it is a book sealed up 
and buried. 

It is most right that in the great republic of 
letters there should be freedom of intercourse and 
a spirit of equality. Every reader who holds a 
book in his hand is free of the inmost minds of 
men past and present ; their lives both within and 
without the pale of their uttered thoughts are 
unveiled to him ; he needs no introduction to the 
greatest; he stands on no ceremony with them; 
he may, if he be so minded, scribble " doggrel " 



370 FREDERIC HARRISON 

on his Shelley, or he may kick Lord Byron, if he 
please, into a corner. He hears Burke perorate, 
and Johnson dogmatize, and Scott tell his border 
tales, and Wordsworth muse on the hillside, with- 
out the leave of any man, or the payment of any 
toll. In the republic of letters there are no privi- 
leged orders or places reserved. Every man who 
has written a book, even the diligent Mr. Whitaker, 
is in one sense an author ; " a book's a book al- 
though there's nothing in 't ; " and every man who 
can decipher a penny journal is in one sense a 
reader. And your " general reader," like the 
grave-digger in Hamlet, is hail-fellow with all the 
mighty dead; he pats the skull of the jester; 
batters the cheek of lord, lady, or courtier; and 
uses " imperious Caesar " to teach boys the Latin 
declensions. 

But this noble equality of all writers of all 
writers and of all readers has a perilous side to 
it. It is apt to make us indiscriminate in the 
books we read, and somewhat contemptuous of 
the mighty men of the past. Men who are most 
observant as to the friends they make, or the con- 
versation they share, are carelessness itself as to 
the books to whom they intrust themselves, and 
the printed language with which they saturate 
their minds. Yet can any friendship or society 
be more important to us than that of the books 
which form so large a part of our minds and even 



HOW TO READ 371 

of our characters? Do we in real life take any 
pleasant fellow to our homes and chat with some 
agreeable rascal by our firesides, we who will take 
up any pleasant fellow's printed memoirs, we who 
delight in the agreeable rascal when he is cut up 
into pages and bound in calf? 

If any person given to reading were honestly 
to keep a register of all the printed stuff that 
he or she consumes in a year all the idle tales of 
which the very names and the story are forgotten 
in a week, the bookmaker's prattle about nothing 
at so much a sheet, the fugitive trifling about silly 
things and empty people, the memoirs of the un- 
memorable, and lives of those who never really 
lived at all of what a mountain of rubbish would 
it be the catalogue ! Exercises for the eye and 
the memory, as mechanical as if we set ourselves 
to learn the names, ages, and family histories of 
every one who lives in our own street, the flirta- 
tions of their maiden aunts, and the circumstances 
surrounding the birth of their grandmother's first 
baby. 

It is impossible to give any method to our read- 
ing till we get nerve enough to reject. The most 
exclusive and careful amongst us will (in litera- 
ture) take boon companions out of the street, as 
easily as an idler in a tavern. " I came across 
such and such a book that I never heard men- 
tioned," says one, " and found it curious, though 



372 FREDERIC HARRISON 

entirely worthless." " I strayed on a volume by 
I know not whom, on a subject for which I never 
cared." And so on. There are curious and 
worthless creatures enough in any pot-house all 
day long; and there is incessant talk in omnibus, 
train, or street by we know not whom, about we 
care not what. Yet if a printer and a book-seller 
can be induced to make this gabble as immortal as 
print and publication can make it, then it straight- 
way is literature, and in due time it becomes " curi- 
ous." 

I have no intention to moralize or to indulge in 
a homily against the reading of what is delib- 
erately evil. There is not so much need for this 
now, and I am not discoursing on the whole duty 
of man. I take that part of our reading which 
by itself is no doubt harmless, entertaining, and 
even gently instructive. But of this enormous 
mass of literature how much deserves to be chosen 
out, to be preferred to all the great books of the 
world, to be set apart for those precious hours 
which are all that the most of us can give to solid 
reading? The vast proportion of books are books 
that we shall never be able to read. A serious 
percentage of books are not worth reading at all. 
The really vital books for us we also know to be 
a very trifling portion of the whole. And yet we 
act as if every book were as good as any other, 
as if it were merely a question of order which 



HOW TO READ 373 

we take up first, as if any book were good enough 
for us, and as if all were alike honorable, pre- 
cious, and satisfying. Alas ! books cannot be more 
than the men who write them ; and as a fair pro- 
portion of the human race now write books, with 
motives and objects as various as human activity? 
books, as books, are entitled a priori, until their 
value is proved, to the same attention and respect 
as houses, steam-engines, pictures, fiddles, bon- 
nets, and other products of human industry. In 
the shelves of those libraries which are our pride, 
libraries public or private, circulating or very 
stationary, are to be found those great books of 
the world ran nantes in gurgite vasto, 1 those books 
which are truly " the precious life-blood of a 
master-spirit." But the very familiarity which 
their mighty fame has bred in us makes us indif- 
ferent ; we grow weary of what every one is sup- 
posed to have read; and we take down something 
which looks a little eccentric, some worthless book, 
on the mere ground that we never heard of it 
before. 

Thus the difficulties of literature are in their 
way as great as those of the world, the obstacles 
to finding the right friends are as great, the peril 
is as great of being lost in a Babel of voices and 
an ever-changing mass of beings. Books are not 
wiser than men, the true books are not easier to 
1 Floating here and there in the surging sea. 



374 FREDERIC HARRISON 

find than the true men, the bad books or the vulgar 
books are not less obtrusive and not less ubiquitous 
than the bad or vulgar men are everywhere ; the 
art of right reading is as long and difficult to 
learn as the art of right living. Those who are 
on good terms with the first author they meet, 
run as much risk as men who surrender their time 
to the first passer in the street; for to be open 
to every book is for the most part to gain as little 
as possible from any. A man aimlessly wandering 
about in a crowded city is of all men the most 
lonely ; so he who takes up only the books that he 
" comes across " is pretty certain to meet but few 
that are worth knowing. 

Now this danger is one to which we are spe- 
cially exposed in this age. Our high-pressure life 
of emergencies, our whirling industrial organiza- 
tion or dis-organization have brought us in this 
(as in most things) their peculiar difficulties and 
drawbacks. In almost everything vast opportuni- 
ties and gigantic means of multiplying our prod- 
ucts bring with them new perils and troubles 
which are often at first neglected. Our huge 
cities, where wealth is piled up and the require- 
ments and appliances of life extended beyond the 
dreams of our forefathers, seem to breed in them- 
selves new forms of squalor, disease, blights, or 
risks to life such as we are yet unable to master. 
So the enormous multiplicity of modern books is 



HOW TO READ 375 

not altogether favorable to the knowing of the 
best. I listen with mixed satisfaction to the paeans 
that they chant over the works which issue from 
the press each day: how the books poured forth 
from Paternoster Row might in a few years be 
built into a pyramid that would fill the dome of 
St. Paul's. How in this mountain of literature 
am I to find the really useful book? How, when I 
have found it, and found its value, am I to get 
others to read it? How am I to keep my head 
clear in the torrent and din of works, all of which 
distract my attention, most of which promise me 
something, whilst so few fulfil that promise? The 
Nile is the source of the Egyptian's bread, and 
without it he perishes of hunger. But the Nile 
may be rather too liberal in his flood, and then 
the Egyptian runs imminent risk of drowning. 

And thus there never was a time, at least during 
the last two hundred years, when the difficulties 
in the way of making an efficient use of books 
were greater than they are to-day, when the 
obstacles were more real between readers and the 
right books to read, when it was practically so 
troublesome to find out that which it is of vital 
importance to know; and that not by the dearth, 
but by the plethora of printed matter. For it 
comes to nearly the same thing whether we are 
actually debarred by physical impossibility from 
getting the right book into our hand, or whether 



376 FREDERIC HARRISON 

we are choked off from the right book by the 
obtrusive crowd of the wrong books ? so that it 
needs a strong character and a resolute system of 
reading to keep the head cool in the storm of lit- 
erature around us. We read nowadays in the 
market-place I would rather say in some large 
steam factory of letter-press, where damp sheets 
of new print whirl round us perpetually if it be 
not rather some noisy book-fair where literary 
showmen tempt us with performing dolls, and the 
gongs of rival booths are stunning our ears from 
morn till night. Contrast with this pandemonium 
of Leipsic and Paternoster Row the sublime pic- 
ture of our Milton in his early retirement at Hor- 
ton, when, musing over his coming flight to the 
epic heaven, practising his pinions, as he tells 
Diodati, he consumed five years of solitude in 
reading the ancient writers 

Et totum rapiunt me, mea vita, libri. 1 

Who now reads the ancient writers ! Who sys- 
tematically reads the great writers, be they an- 
cient or modern, whom the consent of ages has 
marked out as classics ; typical, immortal, pe- 
culiar teachers of our race? Alas! the Paradise 
Lost is lost again to us beneath an inundation of 
graceful academic verse, sugary stanzas of lady- 

1 And books, my life, possess me utterly. 



HOW TO READ 377 

like prettiness, and ceaseless explanations in more 
or less readable prose of what John Milton meant 
or did not mean, or what he saw or did not see, 
who married his great-aunt, and why Adam or 
Satan is like that, or unlike the other. We read 
a perfect library about the Paradise Lost, but the 
Paradise Lost itself we do not read. 

I am not presumptuous enough to assert that 
the larger part of modern literature is not worth 
reading in itself, that the prose is not readable, 
entertaining, one may say highly instructive. Nor 
do I pretend that the verses which we read so 
zealously in place of Milton's are not good verses. 
On the contrary, I think them sweetly conceived, 
as musical and as graceful as the verse of any age 
in our history. A great deal of our modern 
literature is such that it is exceedingly difficult 
to resist it, and it is undeniable that it gives us 
real information. It seems perhaps unreasonable 
to many to assert that a decent readable book 
which gives us actual instruction can be other- 
wise than a useful companion and a solid gain. 
Possibly many people are read} 7 to cry out upon 
me as an obscurantist for venturing to doubt a 
genial confidence in all literature simply as such. 
But the question which weighs upon me with such 
really crushing urgency is this : What are the 
books that in our little remnant of reading time 
it is most vital for us to know? For the true 



378 FREDERIC HARRISON 

use of books is of such sacred value to us that 
to be simply entertained is to cease to be taught, 
elevated, inspired by books ; merely to gather in- 
formation of a chance kind is to close the mind 
to knowledge of the urgent kind. 

Every book that we take up without a purpose 
is an opportunity lost of taking up a book with 
a purpose every bit of stray information which 
we cram into our heads without any sense of its 
importance, is for the most part a bit of the most 
useful information driven out of our heads and 
choked off from our minds. It is so certain 
that information, i.e. the knowledge, the stored 
thoughts and observations of mankind, is now 
grown to proportions so utterly incalculable and 
prodigious, that even the learned whose lives are 
given to study can but pick up some crumbs that 
fall from the table of truth. They delve and 
tend but a plot in that vast and teeming kingdom, . 
whilst those whom active life leaves with but a few 
cramped hours of study can hardly come to know 
the very vastness of the field before them, or how 
infinitesimally small is the corner they can trav- 
erse at the best. We know all is not of equal 
value. We know that books differ in value as 
much as diamonds differ from the sand on the 
seashore, as much as our living friend differs from 
a dead rat. We know that much in the myriad- 
peopled world of books very much in all kinds 



HOW TO READ 379 

is trivial, enervating, inane, even noxious. And 
thus, where we have infinite opportunities of wast- 
ing our efforts to no end, of fatiguing our minds 
without enriching them, of clogging the spirit 
without satisfying it, there, I cannot but think, 
the very infinity of opportunities is robbing us of 
the actual power of using them. And thus I come 
often, in my less hopeful moods, to watch the 
remorseless cataract of daily literature which 
thunders over the remnants of the past, as if it 
were a fresh impediment to the men of our day in 
the way of systematic knowledge and consistent 
powers of thought, as if it were destined one day 
to overwhelm the great inheritance of mankind in 
prose and verse. 

I remember, when I was a very young man at 
college, that a youth, in no spirit of paradox, but 
out of plenary conviction, undertook to maintain 
before a body of serious students, the astounding 
proposition that the invention of printing had 
been one of the greatest misfortunes that had 
ever befallen mankind. He argued that exclusive 
reliance on pfrinted matter had destroyed the 
higher method of oral teaching, the dissemination 
of thought by the spoken word to the attentive 
ear. He insisted that the formation of a vast 
literary class looking to the making of books as 
a means of making money, rather than as a social 
duty, had multiplied books for the sake of the 



380 FREDERIC HARRISON 

writers rather than for the sake of the readers ; 
that the reliance on books as a cheap and common 
resource had done much to weaken the powers of 
memory; that it destroyed the craving for a gen- 
eral culture of taste, and the need of artistic ex- 
pression in all the surroundings of life. And he 
argued, lastly, that the sudden multiplication of 
all kinds of printed matter had been fatal to the 
orderly arrangement of thought, and had hin- 
dered a system of knowledge and a scheme of edu- 
cation. 

I am far from sharing this immature view. 
Of course I hold the invention of printing to have 
been one of the most momentous facts in the whole 
history of man. Without it universal social prog- 
ress, true democratic enlightenment, and the edu- 
cation of the people would have been impossible, 
or very slow, even if the cultured few, as is likely, 
could have advanced the knowledge of mankind 
without it. We place Gutemberg amongst the 
small list of the unique and special benefactors of 
mankind, in the sacred choir of those whose work 
transformed the conditions of life, whose work, 
once done, could never be repeated. And no doubt 
the things which our ardent friend regarded as so 
fatal a disturbance of society were all inevitable 
and necessary, part of the great revolution of 
mind through which men grew out of the mediaeval 



HOW TO READ 381 

incompleteness to a richer conception of life and 
of the world. 

Yet there is a sense in which this boyish anath- 
ema against printing may become true to us by 
our own fault. We may create for ourselves 
these very evils. For the art of printing has not 
been a gift wholly unmixed with evils ; it must 
be used wisely if it is to be a boon to man at all ; 
it entails on us heavy responsibilities, resolution 
to use it with judgment and self-control, and the 
will to resist its temptations and its perils. In- 
deed, we may easily so act that we may make 
it a clog on the progress of the human mind, a 
real curse and not a boon. The power of flying 
at will through space would probably extinguish 
civilization and society, for it would release us 
from the wholesome bondage of place and rest. 
The power of hearing every word that had ever 
been uttered on this planet would annihilate 
thought, as the power of knowing all recorded 
facts by the process of turning a handle would 
annihilate true science. Our human faculties and 
our mental forces are not enlarged simply by 
multiplying our materials of knowledge and our 
facilities for communication. Telephones, mi- 
crophones, paritoscopes, steam-presses, and ubiq- 
uity-engines in general may, after all, leave the 
poor human brain panting and throbbing under 
the strain of its appliances, no bigger and no 



382 FREDERIC HARRISON 

stronger than the brains of the men who heard 
Moses speak, and saw Aristotle and Archimedes 
pondering over a few worn rolls of crabbed manu- 
script. Until some new Gutemberg or Watt can 
invent a machine for magnifying the human mind, 
every fresh apparatus for multiplying its work 
is a fresh strain on the mind, a new realm for it 
to order and to rule. 

And so, I say it most confidently, the first in- 
tellectual task of our age is rightly to order and 
make serviceable the vast realm of printed ma- 
terial which four centuries have swept across our 
path. To organize our knowledge, to systematize 
our reading, to save, out of the relentless cataract 
of ink, the immortal thoughts of the greatest 
this is a necessity, unless the productive ingenu- 
ity of man is to lead us at last to a measureless 
and pathless chaos. To know anything that turns 
up is, in the infinity of knowledge, to know noth- 
ing. To read the first book we come across, in 
the wilderness of books, is to learn nothing. To 
turn over the pages of ten thousand volumes is to 
be practically indifferent to all that is good. 

But this warns me that I am entering on a 
subject which is far too big and solemn. It is plain 
that to organize our knowledge, even to system- 
atize our reading, to make a working selection 
of books for general study, really implies a com- 
plete scheme of education. A scheme of education 



HOW TO READ 383 

ultimately implies a system of philosophy, a view 
of man's duty and powers as a moral and social 
being a religion. Before a problem so great as 
this, on which readers have such different ideas 
and wants, and differ so profoundly on the very 
premisses from which we start, before such a prob- 
lem as a general theory of education, I prefer 
to pause. I will keep silence even from good 
words. I have chosen my own part, and adopted 
my own teacher. But to ask men to adopt the 
education of Auguste Comte, is almost to ask them 
to adopt Positivism itself. 

Nor will I enlarge on the matter for thought, 
for foreboding, almost for despair, that is pre- 
sented to us by the fact of our familiar literary 
ways and our recognized literary profession. 
That things infinitely trifling in themselves: men, 
events, societies, phenomena, in no way otherwise 
more valuable than the myriad other things which 
flit around us like the sparrows on the house-top, 
should be glorified, magnified, and perpetuated, 
set under a literary microscope and focussed in 
the blaze of a literary magic-lantern not for 
what they are in themselves, but solely to amuse 
and excite the world by showing how it can be 
done all this is to me so amazing, so heart- 
breaking, that I forbear now to treat it, as I 
cannot say all that I would. 

The Choice of Books is really the choice of our 



384 FREDERIC HARRISON 

education, of a moral and intellectual ideal, of 
the whole duty of man. But though I shrink from 
any so high a theme, a few words are needed to 
indicate my general point of view in the matter. 

In the first place, when we speak about books, 
let us avoid the extravagance of expecting too 
much from books, the pedant's habit of extolling 
books as synonymous with education. Books are 
no more education than laws are virtue; and just 
as profligacy is easy within the strict limits of 
law, a boundless knowledge of books may be found 
with a narrow education. A man may be, as the 
poet saith, " deep vers'd in books, and shallow in 
himself." We need to know in order that we may 
feel rightly and act wisely. The thirst after truth 
itself may be pushed to a degree where indulgence 
enfeebles our sympathies and unnerves us in ac- 
tion. Of all men perhaps the book-lover needs 
most to be reminded that man's business here is 
to know for the sake of living, not to live for the 
sake of knowing. 

A healthy mode of reading would follow the 
lines of a sound education. And the first canon 
of a sound education is to make it the instrument 
to perfect the whole nature and character. Its 
aims are comprehensive, not special ; they regard 
life as a whole, not mental curiosity; they have 
to give us, not so much materials, as capacities. 
So that, however moderate and limited the op- 



HOW TO READ 385 

portunity for education, in its way it should be 
always more or less symmetrical and balanced, ap- 
pealing equally in turn to the three grand intel- 
lectual elements imagination, memory, reflection: 
and so having something to give us in poetry, in 
history, in science, and in philosophy. 

And thus our reading will be sadly one-sided, 
however voluminous it be, if it entirely close to us 
any of the great types and ideals which the crea- 
tive instinct of man has produced, if it shut out 
from us either the ancient world or other European 
poetry, as important almost as our own. When 
our reading, however deep, runs wholly into 
" pockets," and exhausts itself in the literature of 
one age, one country, one type, then we may be 
sure that it is tending to narrow or deform our 
minds. And the more it leads us into curious by- 
ways and nurtures us into indifference for the 
beaten highways of the world, the sooner we shall 
end, if we be not specialists and students by pro- 
fession, in ceasing to treat our books as the com- 
panions and solace of our lifetime, and in using 
them as the instruments of a refined sort of self- 
indulgence. 

A wise education, and so judicious reading, 
should leave no great type of thought, no dom- 
inant phase of human nature, wholly a blank. 
Whether our reading be great or small, so far as 
it goes, it should be general. If our lives admit 



386 FREDERIC HARRISON 

of but a short space for reading, all the more 
reason that, so far as may be, it should remind us 
of the vast expanse of human thought, and the 
wonderful variety of human nature. To read, and 
yet so to read, that we see nothing but a corner 
of literature, the loose fringe, or flats and wastes 
of letters, and by reading only deepen our natural 
belief that this island is the hub of the universe, 
and the nineteenth century the only age worth 
notice, all this is really to call in the aid of books 
to thicken and harden our untaught prejudices. 
Be it imagination, memory, or reflection that we 
address that is, in poetry, history, science, or 
philosophy, our first duty is to aim at knowing 
something at least of the best, at getting some 
definite idea of the mighty realm whose outer rim 
we are permitted to approach. 

But how are we to know the best ; how are we to 
gain this definite idea of the vast world of letters? 
There are some who appear to suppose that the 
" best " are known only to experts in an esoteric 
way, who may reveal to inquirers what schoolboys 
and betting-men describe as " tips." There are 
no " tips " in literature ; the " best " authors are 
never dark horses ; we need no " crammers " and 
" coaches " to thrust us into the presence of the 
great writers of all time. " Crammers " will only 
lead us wrong. It is a thing far easier and more 
common than many imagine, to discover the best. 



HOW TO READ 387 

It needs no research, no learning, and is only mis- 
guided by recondite information. The world has 
long ago closed the great assize of letters, and 
judged the first places everywhere. In such a 
matter the judgment of the world, guided and in- 
formed by a long succession of accomplished 
critics, is almost unerring. When some Zoilus * 
finds blemishes in Homer, and prefers, it may be, 
the work of some Apollonius of his own discover- 
ing, we only laugh. There may be doubts about 
the third and the fourth rank; but the first and 
the second are hardly open to discussion. The 
gates which lead to the Elysian fields may slowly 
wheel back on their adamantine hinges to admit 
now and then some new and chosen modern. But 
the company of the masters of those who know, 
and in especial degree of the great poets, is a roll 
long closed and complete, and they who are of it 
hold ever peaceful converse together. 

Hence we may find it a useful maxim that, if 
our reading be utterly closed to the great poems 
of the world, there is something amiss with our 
reading. If you find Milton, Dante, Calderon, 
Goethe, so much " Hebrew-Greek " to you ; if your 
Homer and Virgil, your Moliere and Scott, rest 
year after year undisturbed on their shelves beside 
your school trigonometry and your old college 

1 Zoilus, fourth century, Greek rhetorician ; Apollonius of 
Rhodes, third century B.C., Greek epic poet. 



388 FREDERIC HARRISON 

text-books ; if you have never opened the Cid, the 
Nibelungen, Crusoe, and Don Quixote since you 
were a boy, and are wont to leave the Bible and 
the Imitation * for some wet Sunday afternoon 
know, friend, that your reading can do you little 
real good. Your mental digestion is ruined or 
sadly out of order. No doubt, to thousands of 
intelligent educated men who call themselves read- 
ers, the reading through a Canto of Tfe Purga- 
torio, or a Book of the Paradise Lost, is a task as 
irksome as it would be to decipher an ill-written 
manuscript in a language that is almost forgotten. 
But, although we are not to be always reading 
epics, and are chiefly in the mood for slighter 
things, to be absolutely unable to read Milton or 
Dante with enjoyment, is to be in a very bad way. 
Aristophanes, Theocritus, Boccaccio, Cervantes, 
Moliere are often as light as the driven foam ; but 
they are not light enough for the general reader. 
Their humor is too bright and lovely for the 
groundlings. They are, alas ! " classics," some- 
what apart from our everyday ways ; they are not 
banal enough for us ; and so for us they slumber 
" unknown in a long night," just because they are 
immortal poets, and are not scribblers of to-day. 

When will men understand that the reading of 
great books is a faculty to be acquired, not a 

1 The Imitation of Christ, usually attributed to Thomas a 
Kempis, fifteenth century. 



HOW TO READ 389 

natural gift, at least not to those who are spoiled 
by our current education and habits of life? Cecl 
tuera cela? the last great poet might have said 
of the first circulating library. An insatiable ap- 
petite for new novels makes it as hard to read 
a masterpiece as it seems to a Parisian boule- 
vardier to live in a quiet country. Until a man 
can truly enjoy a draft of clear water bubbling 
from a mountain side, his taste is in an unwhole- 
some state. And so he who finds the Heliconian 
spring insipid should look to the state of his 
nerves. Putting aside the iced air of the difficult 
mountain tops of epic, tragedy, or psalm, there are 
some simple pieces which may serve as an unerring 
test of a healthy or a vicious taste for imagina- 
tive work. If the Cid, the Vita Nuova, the Canter- 
bury Tales, Shakespeare's Sonnets, and Lycidas 
pall on a man ; if he care not for Malory's Morte 
d'Arthur and the Red Cross Knight; if he thinks 
Crusoe and the Vicar books for the young; if he 
thrill not with The Ode to the West Wind, and 
The Ode to a Grecian Urn; if he have no stomach 
for Christabel or the lines written on The Wye 
above Tintern Abbey, he should fall on his knees 
and pray for a cleanlier and quieter spirit. 

The intellectual system of most of us in these 
days needs " to purge and to live cleanly." Only 
by a course of treatment shall we bring our minds 
will kill that. 



390 FREDERIC HARRISON 

to feel at peace with the grand pure works of the 
world. Something we ought all to know of the 
masterpieces of antiquity, and of the other nations 
of Europe. To understand a great national poet, 
such as Dante, Calderon, Corneille, or Goethe, is 
to know other types of human civilization in ways 
which a library of histories does not sufficiently 
teach. The great masterpieces of the world are 
thus, quite apart from the charm and solace they 
give us, the master instruments of a solid edu- 
cation. 



THE END 



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TITLE 

Essays for college men. 


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Foerster, Norman, comp. 
Essays for college men. 



